Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 8

FULL BLEED: JANTHINA JANTHINA

Hey, if you're into atmospheric drone that sounds like folk music from the Plateau of Leng, check this out: https://worstward.bandcamp.com/album/ulaan-janthina-part-iIt's pretty good.In other news, no BLACK TRACE chapter this week. There may be one next week. But really I need to solidify release plans, and, frankly, you've got enough to know if you want to keep reading or not. Though as I can actually see how many people have clicked on these previews, I do wonder if this whole move was simply a giant self-own on my part. Ah well.In cosmic horror news, I'm an official sponsor of the Outer Dark Symposium next week. Hopefully I might even attend next year or open my fool mouth on mic and say something that will make people want to take away my cosmic horror fan club card. I'm old enough that I don't care about club membership, so go ahead. But I'm happy to hang with folks who seem interesting and sharp. Unfortunately, I'll be moving my son back to college and won't be able to attend, but maybe I'll drop in by Zoom if I get a chance.That said, there is a bit more about MY DROWNING CHORUS that I can share. Something almost resembling a blurb. I was asked to come up with an elevator pitch, but frankly, I ain't gonna. Here's where I get on my high horse as a writer.So, you ever watch a movie you like, one that's pretty good, and all of a sudden they drop in a historical figure or counterculture hero or even just a movie or TV show or hell, a song you like. And then they lean on that instead of doing the work? "See! We like the things you like! We're just like them!" Take for instance, STRANGER THINGS, the first series, which was the only one I made it through. Remember when the kid goes missing and in order to get him to come out of hiding, his mom buys him tickets for POLTERGEIST? Heart-rending moment, yeah.Not so much. It's borrowed power. It's not even stolen. When you steal something, you make it your own. This is showing the registration tags as belonging to someone else, another thing entirely. "You liked POLTERGEIST? Us, too! Let's squee together!"Now, this has been an issue since the postmodern mode popped up on the scene: borrowing, copying, marginalia-driven plotting, revisionism, referentiality. It's an easy way to familiarity, to understand that there's a common language between the artist and viewer. (I'd say "consumer" but I'm not feeling *that* mean this morning.) "We're both part of the same club! Now smash that like and subscribe!" Again, it's easy, almost effortless. And yeah, it's hard to break in a new thing, new approach, new characters. I've been trying to do it since 1990 and seriously since 2005 or so. It's really hard. People want to be impervious to it because, well, there's a lot of work out there (much of it just content). Go to a comic show and through the small press area and you'll be bombarded with new works, some great, some not. But the thing is, they all gotta get through that armor, the armor we put up just to stay goddamn sane in this looney-bin world.We can't take it all in. It's not even a firehose any more, but a torrential rain, constant, unrelenting. So many things shouting for eyeballs and brain-time. You have to be selective. Even if you stick to pretty much one genre/mode, much less try to branch out across multiples. There is too much. And, again, Sturgeon's law applies in even the most niche microgenre or mode. Most of it's crap (sometimes even enjoyable.)So of course, appearing as another thing that people already love is a great way to sneak past that armor. "See, you're already halfway to liking this thing. It's STAR WARS meets GREAT EXPECTATIONS." Only the sad fact is that just STAR WARS is STAR WARS. Just because you have robots and spaceships and laser swords doesn't mean there's any quality there. It's just checklisting. It's trope-counting. It's pretending. Now, that's convenient for the algorithm, but doesn't take into account that it's genreally bullshit. But then marketing was always bullshit. Only now, creators have internalized that bullshit and think they have to present as something they're not in order to get people to read it.Hence the elevator pitch. It's THE FRENCH CONNECTION meets KRULL. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET meets THE JETSONS. James Bond meets NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It's borrowed power. Worse. It's begged power. "Look at my work through this prism and not as it is."Marketing. Mis-representation.I know. You've only got ten seconds to get the hook in on the show floor or when someone is browsing Amazon. It's really easy to overthink and get yourself lost in the seeming of being another thing because you think you have to. You really don't. It's not a game that you need to play.Yeah, you need to think of something catchy. But don't borrow.So, with all that in mind, I won't two-things pitch you on HAZELAND, or MY DROWNING CHORUS. There's not a lot of point in it. I'll tell you that there's Cosmic Mysteries, Weird Crimes and Gothic Rock and that it's set in 80s Los Angeles. I figure that's enough for you. I know. There's a word missing there. I wonder what it is.Here's the teaser copy for MY DROWNING CHORUS, which is a book I really enjoyed writing and think it's the best thing I've written. But then there's always room for improvement.Cait MacReady is haunted by creating then un-creating the Sightless Eye, preventing the end of everything six months ago, an end that came at the hands of the queen of No Tomorrows. Now Los Angeles itself is haunted by something out in the waters, older than anything, older than names or people to give them. It is both calling and being called, dragging pieces of lost time into Cait's present. When it's finished arranging these pieces, the city will be crushed under the pressures of both water and time.Unless Cait can turn it back. But how can she do that when she can barely hold her own life together?Hopefully you're intrigued enough to check it out when it comes out from Broken Eye Books next spring.

BLACK TRACE - CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8Slats looked about as comfortable as an Eskimo Pie on July sidewalk as he climbed into the car. He sat down like the chair could have lined with punji sticks, even though he’d ridden in Blue near fifty times.“Roy’s?” asked Jake, not looking Slat’s way.“Sure. You pick it.”The air rung with a low standing wave. Nothing could be said to break it up. In the just-rising light, the clouds were great finger-strokes of purple across the warming sky. Jake looked ahead at the lights of the towers near town, knowing that someone had to talk before he or Slats exploded.Jake looked straight ahead as Blue swallowed the black strip, back to the rising sun. Going west. Why he’d come west in the first place.“You got anything to say back to me?” Slats asked. And suddenly it was like he’d waited for someone to say this, waited for years. The base of his spine tightened up and a thousand threads pulled at his insides, ligatures buried until now. He said nothing.“Not just yet.” Cold welled up in his blood. That wall he thought was holding up was beginning to crack out from under him.The sun rose over the jagged rows of precious junk in the Yard. Mullins would be up shortly, tending it like his garden. He might be out there already, resting the tea he swore he hated on his belly and watering his beautiful junk. Jake looked away, seeing the tangle as rubble. He’d be walking through it on patrol. No even footing anywhere and twice as bad in the flat moonlight. Stumble and catch yourself on a brittle plastic spar or drive a masonry spike through your boot to catch tetanus or some damn other bug floating around. The Federal States seemed to be mostly built out of the crap, at least the parts of it he’d grown up in, back when it was just the USA. The sun flashed on the row of motorcycles and it looked like a broken spine, wrecked from carrying too much weight for too long. It was too close. It was right there.Even though California was no longer part of the Federal States, there were reminders. The great gleaming machine of American progress had come to a shuddering stop after a series of fruitless wars overseas coupled with decades of economic chaos and unrest. Rust had crept through the pistons and cranking gears of the United States like cancer until finally everything was brought to a grinding halt. The Great Big Zero hadn’t helped anything, turning information into noise and hashing computer files into glitched Dada before the switch got shut off. The U.S. economy spun into a depression worse than the ones that hit before. The industrial east and Midwest took the worst of it, and were already standing on ground that had long crumbled beneath them. Unemployment and bankruptcy skyrocketed past anyone’s darkest dreams. Crowds ran wild in the streets of every major city, demanding food and shelter from a government that was in no position or had any desire to provide it. The Feds were tied up with trying to stabilize the economy and to somehow create new jobs for sizeable population that was now unemployed and looking for someone to blame.The western U.S. was able to weather the worst of it fairly well. Sales of high technology to overseas markets and independent energy sources helped ensure their success. Things were bad, but nowhere near the scale of the collapse in the east. The states became untied, many refusing to go down with the ship. Empire-building was proved to be the pastime of wealthier nations and the legacy of America was thrown overboard without hesitation. Texas and the Dakotas went their own way. Then California and the other western states, buoyed by agriculture and technology. Going west once again became something young men did, if they could get over the wall.By the time the bleeding stopped, fifteen states had broken free, forming some six or seven loose allegiances. None of them wanted to have the dead weight of the rubble belt hanging on their necks. Jake hadn’t been back to the Federal States since he had quit the force. You just didn’t do that. Though he wondered if there had been any opportunity to rebuild what had been left to shatter and rust. He had picked up transmissions from the Federal States before, but they didn’t tell him what was going on. They were recruitment messages mostly, young men with blankly handsome faces, chiseled jaws and steely eyes. They stood tall under the Stars and Stripes. Sunset shone warmly on their faces as they watched an eagle in flight soaring over a gleaming expanse of a mythical skyline. A commanding voice said, “Duty Now. For The Future.” Jake never went looking for it, though he knew there were entire channels devoted to Federalana, the nostalgia for a time that never was, not even in his memory. The aesthetic seeped up out of the cracks like mud.That wasn’t real. It was just a commercial. Jake had seen the real another time. He caught a clip that someone must have bounced off a pirated satellite or locust network. It was video of soldiers running through a ruined street taking cover from a sudden hail of gunfire that sounded like it had come from right next to the camera. The flags withdrew after the chatter of automatic fire. They were too clean, their victims too dirty and downtrodden. It was propaganda, but who for?The voice of a young man shouted ecstatically: “John Paul Jones of the New American Front declaring a first victory against the illegal occupation of America by Federal Forces!” The voice kept babbling while the black silhouette of the tank rolled into view, down at the end of the shattered boulevard. There was a white plume of smoke from the tank’s gun barrel and the screen went to static.Everything that Jake saw in those few minutes of raw footage told him that nothing had changed. There weren’t cities, just vast seas of concrete and twisted girders. But the physical conflict had been extinguished. The only clashing now was for wall space, since precious little remained. Both the flags and the Rebs needed places and media to expose their slogans and they fought bitterly over what was left. But after all that, nothing was rebuilt. There was no future. Only duty.Slats coughed, reminding Jake that he was still right there.Dust blew through the main drag, swirls crawling across the street, ghostly sidewinders. Jake flashed Blue’s lights at the sentry in the tower. A single spotlight winked back as they passed. The sky went pink and dusted in the rear view.Blue slowly pulled into the sand-strewn parking lot. It was covered with black patches, Rorschach blots of oil spilled on the reddish dirt. There were crazies who claimed that they could read those spots, tell where you’ve been and where you’re headed. Jake didn’t believe in those things. The desert seemed to spawn that kind of faith, living in a world rife with signs just for the looking. Meaning was optional. The neon threw a weak orange cast over Roy’s, the sign making an angry waspish noise as it flashed erratically. The cracked windows were tinted Coke-bottle green. The sign’s message was reflected upside-down in them: “Roy’s Cheap Real Food.”Jake snapped the engine and lights off, then looked at the blinds in the window like prison bars set the wrong way. They got out of the car and walked inside. Slats had his head low. He was looking intently at cigarette wrappers and bottle caps on the ground as they glittered in the early morning sun.The interior of the café was morning dim, illuminated by the purplish light of a bug zapper and a flickering television. Roy sat near the metal cash register watching one of his movies as he smoked a Camel. The smell of the cigarette hit Jake and he wanted one bad. Roy turned to look and smiled, blue light playing off his drawn face. “Morning, Jake, Slats. How you two doin’?” His voice was little more than a ragged rasp. Behind him, a sign said “Mind your manners. Because we do.”“Been better.” Jake said flatly as he found a seat. Slats only answered with a head-shake. Roy took another drag off his stick and stood up. He shut off the Sony and the picture faded to a bright point on the flat black screen.Jake sat in a booth away from the door, back to the wood-grained plastic wall. The vinyl was cracked and worn smooth with the weight of years of visitors. It felt electrified and he couldn’t hold still now.Slats sat across from him. His eyes fixed on the hypnotic purple light of the zapper, anywhere but the other side of the table. Roy stood and set down two dirty white mugs of steaming coffee. He handed them two menus of laminated cardboard. The plastic was nicked and cut at the edges like it had been used to stop knife fights over the years. “What can I get you this morning, citizens? Just got a fresh shipment of real eggs last night, outta Blythe. I hear they’re from actual chickens.”Slats pored uselessly over the menu. It never changed. Everyone knew that. “Shrimp and eggs, scrambled. And another cup of black,” Slats said after draining the first cup.“The usual. Right,” Roy growled. “Jake?”Jake didn’t even look at the menu. “You got some sausage? Real meat? I’ll pay the extra. Toast, too.” Being too specific at Roy’s was a short path to disappointment.“Someone just finished a job, I see.” The smile showed nicotine creases in his everything. He nodded and left, breathing smoke behind him.“I need a cigarette. I mean really need one,” muttered Jake. “Excuse me.” He got up and walked over to the machine in the corner. Slats reached to say something, but couldn’t find it and let him go.Jake crossed the cafe to the cigarette machine in the corner. “Five bucks per – Don’t even think about stiffing me” said the magic-marker scribble on cardboard. His eyes flashed over the brands, nothing coming to him. They were all the wrong names. He opened the front of the machine and dropped a couple of roughed-up bills into the sheet-metal box and fished for a pack of plain Ridgways.Jake unwrapped the package noisily as he walked back to the table. He tore open the foil and placed a cigarette in his mouth. His hand automatically went for his pocket, feeling for the lighter he hadn’t carried in years.Jake found a book of matches up by the cash register in an overturned hubcap stolen from a Tucker. The matches advertised Vanishing Point, the only bar in town. Its logo was spelled out with inviting curves of pink neon on a dusk desert backdrop. Jake struck a match and lit the cigarette without having to think about it. Pure memory.He sat down. Smoke rose from the cigarette. He breathed in once and coughed explosively. Stifling it, he breathed in again, then exhaled a thin stream of blue. He brought his boots onto the bench and pressed his back against the window, feeling the cool plastic begin to warm to the morning sun. The tension receded, but didn’t leave completely.Much better. Just needed that stick, that’s all.Slats looked out the window into the pale turquoise stripes between the blinds. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked. “Just let someone from Joshua Tree roll out and arrest you? ‘Cause Daniels isn’t going to let this slip by. Prell might have, but not Daniels.”Jake blew another line of smoke. “I don’t know. Just that I never figured you’d be the one to tell me.” He leaned forward and looked at Slats. “See, I always thought that someone with a bronze badge would step out of a crowd, cuff me, then drag me away. Either that, or I’d be done long distance by a Wesson sniper job if they thought I was worth the trouble.“I never even told Madelyne. I never told her…” Remember how she was curious about the waffled scar and you wouldn’t tell her what it really was. If she figured it out, she never let on. “Shit. It’s not like…”“Not like what? Not like I eat babies?” He thought of the stories about flags that circulated during the Secession. “Those guys were all the bad shit that ever was. You heard the joke that went around? ‘What’s the difference between Nazis and flags?’”Slats shook his head, pretending not to know the answer. “‘Nazis at least knew when to quit.’” Jake finished his first cigarette and flicked it into the ashtray. He looked right at Slats, into those slate-colored eyes. “Tell me that things are different now.”The other man stared at the dregs of the coffee cup and nodded. “No lie, but…”His answer was cut off by Roy’s rasping voice. “Better quit those things. You’ll end up sounding like me.” He smiled, teeth long and yellow.“It’s okay. I’m real good at quitting.” Jake smiled a crooked one back.Looking over at Slats’ plate, Jake wondered how anyone could eat bugs. He had seen the pens that grew those things and was damned if he’d eat anything that came out of those still, murky green ponds. Jake ate in spite of the hanging smell from the plate. Those were things you fed to other food. --The sun was out full by the time they had finished breakfast. Green and black zebra stripes from the tinted window were painted over the table. Jake smoked another and watched Slats finish his third cup.“Now what, since there’s a they that knows?” Jake asked. The smoke curled lazily towards the still blades of the overhead fan. He’d already thought up a handful of different scenarios, figuring that none of them were even close.Slats placed the cup on the table, scarred and pitted. “Daniels wants to see you. Order went out with this morning’s shift. I might’ve jumped the gun a little bit.”“You know what for? It’s not like I’m a lawbreaker.”He narrowed his eyes in faintly mocking disbelief. “Say again?”“A bad lawbreaker,” Jake corrected. “Just ask Lois. She’ll give you an armful of glowing recommendations.”Slats shrugged and tried to pull a last drag of black out of the cup then gave up. “No charge, but ‘compelling witness’ was thrown. Figure that I’ve got a little time to bring you in before Booth does. You know how he works.”Jake had met Booth before but he could only remember his own reflection in the shades. He was the kind of cop that made citizens clench when they were pulled over, all confidence and power and impatience. Better that Slats had gotten to him first. Jake stubbed out the stick in a glass ashtray with a scorpion embedded in the bottom. “Let’s go. Just get it done.” Jake breathed, resigned. He tried not to think about exit routes, and how many there might be on the way out the door.Slats gave him a knowing look and nodded. “I’m glad you agreed. ’Cause I’d hate having to drag you in.” He wasn’t smiling.Jake stopped in place. “We’re friends and all.” He smiled faintly. “But without me wanting it, you wouldn’t be able to.”The wrinkles around his eyes slouched a bit as he frowned. “If it wasn’t me, it’d be someone else. Sooner or later. There’s a lot of Cal-I and only one of you.”“A lot of anywhere else to be out here.” He was pulling his jacket on when he heard the bell over the door ring. He saw the suits who walked in and stiffened. Slats picked up on it and turned around. “What…” His voice trailed off. “Oh, hell.”Three men slow-swaggered into the café. All of them wore identical deep blue uniforms and mirrored wraparound shades, silver bug eyes that seemed to eat half their faces. They had the determined and resolute stride of men with a mission. Business to attend to, minus anything like sentimentality. The hard light of the sunrise ground out any features in their faces.“That blue burner shows up as a big problem in my book,” the lead cop said to the room, not looking at anyone. “Who wants to step up now?” Jake didn’t need to read the name on the badge to know who’d come around.“Don’t do anything stupid.”Jake stood there still, watching as they walked between the counter and booths. The light of the zapper became twin points of violet in their silicon eyes. Booth’s hand rested on his holstered pistol, more as a statement of fact than any interest on his part. But there was a taunting hint at the edges of his lips.Jake was smarter than that. Nobody started anything with a Cal-I trooper and walked away from it with a good side.Booth was a goddamn flag, but he didn’t wear the bronze. Same walk, same air, same everything else, though. A different flavor of power.“LT,” Booth said as he came to a stop near the table. His voice was like a broad file dragged across a wrist, hard. “We’ll be taking the prisoner now.” He didn’t ask, so it just came out blank and mean.Slats swole up, angry. “First word out of your mouth is sir, or you’ve stepped in it.” He waited for the correct response.“Sir. Yes, sir,” Booth said, hardly moving his lips.Slats breathed in and continued. “Nor is he a prisoner, so you try a different phrase.” He breathed out hard through his nostrils, close enough to fog Booth’s glasses.“Sir. The captain told us to bring him in, cuffs and the whole guest package.” Jake saw the anger writhing beneath the surface of Slats’ face and wondered how much it would take to get him to punch Booth in the kidneys.Slats turned to Jake, dismissing the others with a flashed scowl. “The captain has trust issues, apparently.” He looked back at the cop, making sure that he had been suitably humbled. They hadn’t gotten the message. “We’ll follow in his car, Corporal. You and your men are dismissed.”Booth stood there, stock still. “Which words didn’t you understand? I said dismissed.” The plate with the kidney punch on it was waiting under the hot lights, ready to be served.“Sir. Captain’s orders. Culver comes with us.” Booth hid his smile expertly. “And he said that was from him. He’s the only one who can call us off.”“Sorry…” Slats began to say.Jake waved it off. “No problem, I’ll go with them. Aces.” He said it, but his eye was on the door and figuring how to put space between him and them. Foolish thought, but it came anyways.Slats’ grey-blue eyes watched him warily. “You sure?”“Not going to start a thing over it.” He put his eyes right on Booth’s shades. “Let’s go.”There was no need to get Slats in any more trouble with Daniels. He and Slats had been butting heads ever since Daniels took command over from Captain Prell, who had been jumped on the road a couple of months back. Prell was hooked up to some rig in the hospital at Joshua Tree, still sucking lemon meringue pies through a tube.Jake threw Blue’s keys over to Roy, who caught them without looking away from the TV. “Thanks, Roy. Great cup of black.”“You in trouble?” asked Roy, momentarily looking away from the CRT.Jake shook his head. “I’ll be back soon for the keys.”“Maybe not so soon, flag,” Booth hissed under his breath. Rising to that would only ensure a steady torrent of shit. No need for that so early in the day. Slats paid for breakfast with black plastic that Roy waved through the reader with shaky, nicotine-stained fingers.The sunlight was blinding as they stepped outside the dim café, with wind that was hot and dry coming in off the Mojave. Everyone called it “Devil breath,” like standing in front of an open blast furnace. Booth was right behind Jake. He could feel eyes on the back of his neck, every bit as hot as the sunlight. Parked on either side of Blue was a Cal-Intercept cruiser. It was a reminder that they could call up as much muscle as they thought necessary to bring him in. Or hit him if he chose to run.Since when did I become such a high roller? One of the shadow officers stepped ahead and opened the back door of the nearest cruiser. The tinted windows cast a sick gray pallor over the grimed plastic seat cover in the back.“Watch it,” warned Booth. “Those doors are smaller than they look.” Booth violently pushed into the back of the car. Jake caught the side of his head on the top of the door frame and started to curse, but bit it off. That would be just like putting sugar on top for them. He rolled to his side, then started to sit.Jake touched his temple gently, checking for blood. The door slammed shut, blotting out the too-bright sun and making the back seat feel like solitary. It smelled like sweat and dirt inside, only just kept clean enough. Outside, Slats yelled something and the engine revved up. “Goddammit! I’ll have your head for this!” He was talking to dust by now.Jake removed his jacket. The back of the car was warming quickly in the September sun. It would be oven-hot in a short time. Booth and the other guy didn’t seem to mind. They probably even had air conditioning up there. Asking them to route it to the backseat would only have brought a black laugh. Just sit and sweat.The mountains and plain flashed by. Joshua trees stood out on the sand like packs of untidy and flightless birds. He saw the charred spot where he had to smoke a gang a while back. Gila Monsters, they were called. They all wore black-and-yellow-banded jackets, and fought pretty well for ghouls. In the end though, all that was left was the black spot where their ’18 Rustler exploded. Incendiaries kissing the fuel system. Even the burnt-out chassis was gone, sold for scrap by some opportunists. Nothing lasted out in the desert. If scavengers didn’t pick apart the wreck, the land itself just swallowed it.Jake leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to drive away the throbbing that split his skull. The sunlight was relentless, smashing through the fingerprint-smeared windows. It was the first time Jake had ridden in the back of a cruiser as a prisoner. The ride to Joshua Tree was too long. --Joshua Tree Station was huge and imposing. Its walls towered on the south side of the sixty-two and dared a look, much less a challenge. Back before the Secession, it had been a large, if not misplaced, industrial park of slab concrete and right angles. The network of buildings had all been filled in, making something not unlike a hive, cobbled together out of what had been available and then painted over in the same desert tan to try and enforce a sense of cohesion. The older chain link had been replaced by reinforced concrete and razor wire. Every corner had an observation station with cameras and men hidden behind five centimeters of ballistic plastic. Below them hung a 30 millimeter chaingun which was more than enough to deter your average troublemaker. Cal-Intercept had little opportunity to use their toys. Nobody in memory had ever been stupid or suicidal enough to attack the station directly. Even when the Feds rolled past, they never rolled downrange.Sunlight shone through the tangled razors atop the wall, reflecting off a thousand edges. The massive front gate rolled back and admitted the cruiser. A figure waved from behind the bulletproof glass of a tower as the slid behind the walls. The California flag and that of the League hung listless in the still air of the compound, trapped between gusts of wind. They kicked up in time with the whine of a helicopter warming up. Dust flew across the landing pad as the bug lifted off, tandem rotors slicing through the air.The cruiser stopped and the two cops up front climbed out. Booth stood there smiling behind the door that opened, a pair of cuffs in his hand. They jingled enticingly.“Guess I forgot the jewelry.” He frowned sheepishly.“I never knew you felt that way about me,” Jake said. “First date and all.”“Out, pucker-puss. Hands behind your back, nice and slow.”Jake tried to place the accent. It was vaguely eastern, flattened in the wrong places. Not uncommon, but not all that common out here, either. Lotta people in California who weren’t born out here.“Hope you like it rough,” he said as the cuffs bit into Jake’s wrists.A few of the technicians milling about the yard stopped and watched as Booth hauled in his catch. Jake tried to relax as he was tossed around, knowing that clenching up was just going to make it hurt more. The two stoic figures posted by the door dropped their duties long enough to turn their heads and watch the full show as it passed by.He kicked himself for not having Slats just take him right in, but doing things the easy way had never come naturally. Through the dim hallway, Jake saw a pool of light surrounding a desk. The attendant was hunched over, occupied in some task, face lit from beneath by a green-white slatescreen which made him look like a comic book villain.Jake smelled the coffee spilled all over the desk as it soaked into the workpad. The attendant cursed bitterly and threw a soaked paperback book into the precycle can where it made a soggy noise. The desk-slave didn’t look up until Booth shoved Jake into his workspace.“What is it?” asked the attendant, watching with bloodshot eyes rimmed in green. The irritation of the lost coffee and book had pushed him from impassive and detached to seething rage at anyone within reach.“This here’s the flag that Daniels wanted. Culver’s his name.” Booth took off his glasses. Jake saw colorless eyes, like bleach.The guy mouthed the word scowled haughtily as if Jake was a turd that refused to flush. “Take him right back. No waiting.”“Aw,” Booth whined. “I was hoping to visit interrogation for a little while.” He tugged on the cuffs, hard enough to catch wrist bone. Booth started dragging Jake back through the halls. The attendant watched them both as they left. He’d never seen a real flag this close before. They didn’t look so tough.The tiles were bureaucratic off-white, dingy and in bad need of scouring. Scuff marks and dust coated the floor, obscuring the original color with a muddy haze. Cameras set at junctions scanned the halls silently, save for the faint whine of servos in need of oil.They stopped in front of a door with a frosted glass pane that read, “Neil Daniels, Captain. Sixth Desert Precinct” in freshly painted letters.Jake remembered Payson’s office. It had been little more than a closet, but he had a view of most of the surrounding area through the windows. That made him feel like he was on top of it all. He had filled the office with all sorts of loot from the wars that he had fought: Colombian rifles, the cornerstone of a Baghdad mosque, half of a shattered swastika, bronze stars and tassels of colored silk like Christmas ornaments without a tree. The Eagle flag hung beside the door, huge as the night sky, though the field of stars was yellowed and old then.Tucked almost invisibly among all that junk was a portrait of Captain Payson’s family. It was a tiny monochrome that seemed puny and insignificant among all the grandeur of the Federal States of America and the ghosts of its wars. Jake somehow resented that. That the man’s family was such a tiny chunk of his life that they only took up a corner on his desk.Booth knocked on the door. The frosted glass made a sound of breaking ice.“Open,” came a big voice from the other side.Booth opened the door and stood beside it. He gestured to Jake with his standard-issue cleft chin and then pointed into the office. Jake walked in, watching the camera watching him with a fish-eye.The room was deceptively small, furniture augured into place. There was a huge screen at the back of the room that was so big that the room must have been constructed around it, or maybe it was just fabbed and then assembled past the door. It felt like a phone booth with a desk and a viewer jammed into it.Looking at the figure behind the desk, Jake realized that it wasn’t that the room was small. Rather, the man who occupied it was huge. A mountain of flesh, a hundred forty kilos, maybe a little less. He was sitting, which made it difficult to gauge his height. He was fat, but there was enough muscle left on him to make someone think three times about a casual cross.Captain Daniels wore his thinning hair short and kept the rest of his dome shiny. His face was big and heavy, features that could have been used to scour rock to powder. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead and glistened in the light of the overhead lamp. Daniels was an unattractive man, but nobody was going to tell him that. He looked at Jake with hunter’s eyes. “Shut the door,” Daniels snapped. Jowls shook visibly when he talked. His voice seemed to come from under the ground rather than out of his mouth.Jake looked over the desk. There was only one thing on the billiard-green felt: a folder with a yellow note tagged to it. The note said EXT-RENDITION in block letters. That word ran through Jake like a bullet. “Take his cuffs off, Booth,” Daniels growled. “You weren’t ordered to restrain him.”Booth looked away quickly. “Given his record, I thought it…”Daniels interrupted angrily. “You aren’t paid to think. Take. The cuffs. Off.” The asshole was unspoken but rang in the big man’s voice. Jake rattled the cuffs behind his back and didn’t smile.Booth acted his part pretty well. His eyes never left the ground, scolded schoolboy style. The show was nice, but it was nothing new. Jake had run it himself back when the job was more arresting and less shooting. Booth shoved the key into the lock as hard as he could, trying to get a final twist in. “That’s home all right,” Booth breathed.There was a click and the bracelets fell to the floor. Jake took his wrist and started rubbing the pain out of it. He ignored the freshly abraded skin tags the metal had left.“Not used to being on the receiving end. Huh?” Daniels smiled at his own observation. He leaned forward and flopped the file open, watching Jake as he did so. There was a huge band of sweat down Daniels’ back, though the room was cool enough.He cleared his throat, then spoke. “Culver, Charles Jacob. Born Aurora, Colorado. Enlisted Federal States Security Police at age seventeen.” His dark eyes narrowed. “You lied about your age?”“Yes.” Jake’s answer was flat.“All eager and willing to serve, huh?” Daniels smiled a mocking grin. “Showed exemplary behavior in the Denver chapter of FSSP. Twice decorated: Bronze Star and Eagle Wing. Very nice.” Daniels read it off without looking, as if he’d spent the hour previous memorizing the thing. Jake was staring straight ahead, conscious of Booth’s eyes on his neck.“Trained in combat driving, blah blah blah. Oh, this is good. Ran remote surveillance and recon on the White Lightning out in the Rockies.” Daniels pursed his lips with malice. “We were short that week and I used to hunt up there with my stepdad.”“I heard they were real mean.” He scowled, fit to spit.Jake struggled to remember something distinctive about White Lightning. They were one of a large number of neo-fascist revolutionaries who had made a bid for power while the government was out to lunch. “Right America is White America” got shouted and painted up a lot back then. And while they might not have had a brain to share amongst themselves, they were smart enough to ride resentment and to pick easy targets. When you’ve got nothing and people come along offering you a way to get something, even that seems like a square deal if you don’t think on it too closely. The best thing about them was that they were rubbed out now.“Nobody’s mean when they’re being cluster fucked by a couple of s-wings,” Jake said drily. He’d been up there in the scrub pines, painting their compounds with infrared lasers. All humans on the triggers, no mistakes, no hijacked remotes. “Ain’t that the truth,” said Daniels. He made a hawking noise, but didn’t spit, just rolled it around under his tongue. “Exemplary service until you made looey. Friction in your platoon. Bucking orders. Redirecting lethality. Here’s the part that I like. July seventh, twelve years back. Failure to report to post. You disappeared with a cruiser full of equipment. Like the wind.” Daniels scratched his thinning hair as his brow wrinkled. His hand came away moist and he wiped it absently on his seat. Jake’s guts churned a little, old ghosts filling him with acid. “What’s your point, Captain?” The curiosity was a sharp edge in his voice.Daniels closed the folder like it was radioactive now. “The point is that you’re wanted by the Federal States for theft of military property, desertion, and failure to appear on said counts. “They want you back.” Daniels looked across the desk. His dark eyes were set too deep in his fleshy, slick face.

FULL BLEED: THE HOWLING PIT AND THE CONSUMING SEA

It's time to do book promotion. Mostly for BLACK TRACE, which I'm nailing down a release date for (probably November given lead times needed). But also for my mother's science fiction books, which were originally printed over a period of time from 1975 or so until 1987-ish. These were printed long before anyone thought to include ebook rights in perpetuity, so she actually retains those.The first thing, just in case you don't know this already: there are a LOT of books being published in any given month. I'm not just talking big five publishers (it's five, right or are we down to four). I'm talking all of the indie presses and micropresses and every single author like myself who has the gall to put out books all on their own. It's a lot of books. An unthinkable number. To even contemplate it is to force you to ask "Hey, does this world need another book this month?".Honestly, it's absolutely draining. Yes, it's my book, it's special and precious and gosh darn it, I chased my dream right off the edge of the precipice. I'm falling and oh well, this is what I must have wanted because it's where I am. If the rule was what got me here, then of what use was the rule, y'know?I don't blame most book bloggers and outlets saying simply "Yeah, we're not looking at self-published books at all." I get it. Life is too goddamn short. If you tried to dip your toe in that sea, something huge would end up sucking you in and crushing you over time to something the size of a sugarcube. It's a defense mechanism. You can't possibly gaze into that abyss, ford the Howling Pit with its thousand thousand voices clamoring for attention. The influencers are in a position of power, and who can question that they can offer something of pretty substantial value, so yeah, of course they can be choosy. They have to be choosy.Hell, I have to be choosy with what I point my attention at. You want cosmic horror and insignificance? You want a hit of that? Go look through just the LOCUS publication announcements on any given month. And these are the projects big enough to actually get their attention, that of one of the premiere outlets in the field. They've got no choice but to swim through the Howling Pit, but I suspect they're protected well-enough that they can survive this on a regular basis. They have to. Honestly, though, every time I do this, try to take in the breadth (not depth but I'll get to that later) of even just SF genre fiction, it's overwhelming. I suppose this is a good problem to have, right? SF is incredibly healthy. Just look at all these books coming out month-in, month-out, forever. Healthy, healthy genre.There's no way to read even a meaningful fraction of it. There's no way to read even a meaningful fraction of horror books that come out in a month. Or even if you narrow it down to cosmic horror. Yeah, no way to keep your head above water if you dive in. I've got a lot of other things to do, namely try and write and then try and sell what I've written. Not to mention being Mr. Mom, as I have been for the whole of this millennium (minus the summer and fall of 2000). Yeah, can't keep up with it. Sorry. I'm a bad genre champion.No, really, I am. But I don't think any genre needs to be saved. Saving is what misers do. Books and people need to have their own lives (and yes, books have a life, one for each person who reads 'em, but again, that's a subject for another dispatch.)I read what I can and what seems interesting (and that's a lot more nonfiction as opposed to prose these days. Last couple things I read were BEYOND ANTHROPOLOGY, an ethnomethodological examination of anthropology as a practice and phenomena written by a professor I had in classes more than thirty years ago, and I'm currently reading Colin Dickey's THE UNIDENTIFIED, which tackles why we believe weird things and how we've come to believe some of them -- it's very good). I follow some authors whose work I already know and sometimes have time to latch onto a new author entirely -- S.A. Cosby's BLACKTOP WASTELAND which I hope to start this week maybe? Don't have a lot of other time. I'm a slow reader. Sorry. So I can kinda stay sane in a world I've sized off.But when I have to go do book marketing? Yeah, back into the Howling Pit and the Consuming Sea. There's a lot of book blogs out there, y'know? A lot of people running Instagram accounts and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and YouTube accounts where they talk at the camera about you. Oh yeah, this is pure Howling Pit territory. (And if you're not familiar with the terminology of Howling Pit, well you could buy the book and read it or you could understand that the term is just the shorthand I use for the Internet of Ideas and Opinions in all its myriad forms. We're convinced that we have to participate in it (just like I'm doing right now -- whoops) and give it free content in the hopes of going viral and people buying the thing you're talking about.Aside. I once had a tweet go actually viral. 41k likes and something like 10k retweets. It was baffling. When I saw the ball rolling, I quickly added a "here's a link to my Amazon page and here's my latest book" link like you're supposed to do. You'd think 41k likes, that's getting your name out there. That'll get you some traffic.It got maybe two books sold. I know one for sure.Even in the thankless world of direct mail, that's a horrible return figure. But you know, you get the publicity you pay for.Oh, right, I'm supposed to talk about promotion. About getting your name out there. Ah, that's the joke, I've been doing that since the start, right? Ever since I started writing a blog or a column for a period of almost ten years for absolutely free or kept writing the blog or serialized books online. I've spent way more time marketing than writing and honestly, that's draining. When in an attempt to stave off actual existential despair a few years ago, I started up a tumblr blog where I took close-up pictures of old comic book pages and that got me way more feedback and interest than any post I ever did on my writing. That is a thing that'll rearrange your head when you think about the currency of likes and attention. But mostly it'll suck you dry if you consider it for any length of time, so I try to limit when and were I do that. I'm indulging a little right now.So, time to audition. Oh, you know what I mean. Every single email or contact form or direct message to one of these sites or accounts or people or groups, it's an audition. Just like sending books in over the transom if you're going unagented or uninvited. (I did a lot of slush submissions -- I've had two work out. I know better than to try and chase down an agent.) So each of these is another resume in the mail and hoping to get an interview or a call-back.I try not to think about how the book I'm promotion, whether it's mine or someone else's, just becomes another piece of shovelware, for lack of a better word. Because that is one of the sad facts of the Howling Pit, where anyone can publish and does. Hell, it's what Hollywood was doing for everything but their tentpole films. Get those first week numbers and then move in the next rank. Go take a look at Amazon/Tubi/Netflix streaming sometime. Whole rafts of movies released that get out there to become a postage stamp size image (or three in rotation) and jaunty/teasing capsule description to maybe become enough of a fishhook for the eye to get you to click.No. I haven't looked at what's been released just on Kindle Unlimited. I'm sure if I did, I'd throw myself off a(nother) cliff. Wave after wave of words unleashed. I'm sure some of it is good. I'm sure I'd even like some of it (very much not the same thing.) There's no way to drink from the firehose and not have it blast your teeth right out. That said, I'm sure it's about like the overwhelming and crushing vastness of content that's out there on any of the streaming services. So yeah, wide seas, but perhaps not terrifically deep. Daunting all the same. You get tired walking miles of thigh-deep water, even if there aren't going to be megaladons in there to snap you up in a bite.Now, this isn't questioning the basis of writing, in particular keeping me writing and putting work out there. Though I do wander those woods sometimes, and I even end up snagging a sweater on a branch or bramble and get stuck there awhile. But I'm mostly through that. This, however, (points at everything) is a lot to deal with. Even as a reader of this stuff. Let me repeat this. Even as a dude who enjoys a lot of this stuff (that being a variety of genres, but more in particular voices), the world is a lot to take in. I'm happy to contribute my voice to the chorus, even if it ain't ever gonna get heard. But playing the marketing game? That's significantly harder. Mostly because I question the fundamental issue of marketing (that being using something other than the thing to sell the thing.) Yeah, tough knot to chop in half. But here we are, sword in hand.Don't worry, I'll talk about my mom's first release shortly. And I should note that her being a writer of SF in the early seventies (while not unheard of) was kind of a big deal. Which is why I gotta laugh at folks who say that JK Rowling made it okay for women to write genre. Go read a little wider next time. Expand your world. Lastly, my publisher is running a Kickstarter for another day or two, for an anthology they're planning. But in that, there was a reveal about MY DROWNING CHORUS, you know, the second HAZELAND book. It's due out next spring/summer.Here's that link.Until next time.

BLACK TRACE - Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7Everything had gone straight to hell since Danh-Danh and his pals had bought it, Thin Man decided. He stared into the curved screen, reflection distended and convex in the glass.Los Coyotes had gone gunning for the Sons of the Tiger in general and Danh-Danh’s clave in particular. The old Monte Carlo couldn’t have been more than inches over the blacktop, cruising silent. The blacked window rolled down on the passenger side and someone stuck the oiled barrel of a streetsweeper through the opening. But the Tigers were too busy jabbering and flexing to notice.Danh-Danh and his ’clave had been standing in front of the soup stand, leaning on their vermilion bikes. The burner creeping down the street was beneath their notice. After all, it was their neighborhood, nothing would happen here. No Tigers got zeroed on their own streets. They didn’t believe it, even after someone shouted “Shooter! Down!” Someone thought it was a prank.The gunman sprayed the front of the shop with a storm of steel pellets the size of peas. The clip was vented in ten seconds of thunder. Everyone in front of the shop, Tigers or not, had been shredded. Their blood was mixed with the razor shards of glass like scattered rubies and diamonds. Hazard street was living up to its name again.At least that’s what Thin Man had heard. He didn’t know anyone who had seen the Monte Carlo for sure or anyone who had even seen Coyotes in New Saigon that night. But word was that Coyotes were behind the wheel and pulled the triggers. It was easy to take snaps of the carnage, but harder to get a clean shot of a moving target. Wannabes and slickers smelled the blood and ran to it, but only the freshest pics got any looks. In the morning, it would be old news.The talk lit up all over New Saigon and Santána. Through the Weave that linked all the lines in Orange, Thin Man watched the information transfers like clusters of stars bursting into life and fading into nothingness with eyeblink quickness, supernovas of attention. Nobody was saying anything new, though. It was all repeats and tweaks and rumor shined up until it became almost true. Nobody had any answers. And Brother Thanh was going to want some, square.On the streets, everyone hushed up and began to pack again. Greysuits from OCPD stayed way out of New Saigon and Santána both. They weren’t going to be able to keep the icehouse cool if things between Coyotes and Sons of the Tiger started to go real bad. Thin Man watched Yamaha cycles race through the streets, out on some war dance all running in packs. Nobody had gotten themselves killed yet, but someone would be if something wasn’t done soon. And that kind of rock and roll was nothing Thin Man wanted any part of.He wished Jason was still around. Jason always knew what to do. He had the good sense to hit the big time and pick up himself a whole new set of problems, but at least they were just sponsorship problems.Which was funny, once Thin Man thought about it a moment.--The next morning, he enjoyed a cup of hot Ibarra in the Mexican coffee bar in the Plaza. He was watching the doves fly through the third level. At least he thought they were doves, though he wondered if they were supposed to be orange and blue. The screen up top was playing scenes of an Arctic prospect, ice looking cold as it hung in the warmish air. A polar bear lumbered stupidly through the jagged aquamarine landscape.Then the Tiger sat down at the table opposite him, without warning or a hello. Short guy, little over one and a half meters. His face had wise, grandfather eyes which shone black. The suit he wore was woven from Muddenahalli silk, cut just like a Razor’s jacket, all angles that ate the light. This was his table, just that Thin Man happened to be sitting here first.“Good morning, Thin Man,” the Tiger said in modest Vietnamese. The voice was bigger than the man, a liquid purr with discipline beneath the surface. “Your skill and craft are known well in our circles.” Thin Man nodded, not wondering who was spreading word. He knew already.The Tiger ordered some Mexican black that he did not drink. He steepled his manicured hands over the steaming cup. His sleeve fell down far enough for Thin Man to see the curved nails of the stylized tiger paw tattoo on his left wrist. It was a very quiet display of power, removing all uncertainty as to what the man was. And his tattoo wasn’t a mere outline, but full black, taking years to work up to that honor mark.Thin Man took a sip of his spiced tea and smiled politely. He was not dressed formally this morning. He hadn’t expected to be doing business, speaking with a pointer. Though the guy looked like he could do any job that needed doing, not just calling them out.“I am unduly honored.” He shifted in his seat. Clients of this caliber didn’t come to him directly. There had always been a middleman before. This must be a real Cadillac job. “How may I be of service?” The man said nothing and then smiled.“Tell me, Thin Man. Is it true you ride Leviathan?” The Tiger asked it just like that, just like a friend would ask if you could get a bottle of Corona from across the street.Thin Man swallowed hard. Someone else had been telling when they should have just shut the hell up. There’s reputation and then there’s a specific deed. Dusty. Yeah, it was him. He never could keep his yap shut.“If it can be done.” The Tigers thought they knew already, or they wouldn’t have gone looking for him, but there might be enough room for some flex if he played it right.“Excellent.” His teeth were arctic white, his manner terminal. “We have much to discuss.”--By the time the coffee had cooled, Thin Man and the Tiger had worked out the details of the arrangement. After Thin Man left the table, the Tiger sat there elegantly sitting before his Mexican black. It was simple, easy, direct. Thin Man didn’t want the job, but refusal wasn’t possible, either. And maybe this job could actually be done, though the gap between expectation and likely reality was dark and deep. Men like this weren’t known for being overly concerned with the attainability of their goals, just whether the doing got done.--An hour later, Thin Man woke up the Total and looked though his list of onramps. Nothing too public. Nothing that a number could stick to. He called up his best and sleekest and went riding. The public face of the Weave was just business, but the private face was fed as much by that which could be done out of sight as the polite and solid. Transactions decoupled from accountability. Pools of fortune pushed around by eddies of currency and desire. Want something? It’s out there unless there’s money spent to lock it up or burn it out like electroshock.Out in the middle of the Weave, Leviathan was unmistakable, a mammoth tower of faceless gold that soared up and out of the flat, and sprawled traffic clustered around it. It was the knife with which the men who had the means cut up the world, serving themselves double slices or more. The Trust kept a billion billion secrets locked up tight there, or so it was said. After the roaring boom and then the quiet of the Bust and the Great Big Zero that followed, the Internet was all but undone, frayed and unraveled. The Weave was built on top of it, only those who built it wanted to make sure that their fingers stayed well into things, pinching out a chunk of everything that went down.Of course, that was the dream of the new Kings of the World, but even their reach wasn’t into quite everything. While they could make their own remote shoals of activity, everyone had to do business in the real world once in a while. Doors had to be opened to the wider Weave, and doors were invitations to riders like Thin Man. All you had to do was to get past the sentinels and snares, and then it was glass-smooth. He didn’t see any guards this time. Last time he rode Leviathan, the base of the tower was thick with chromed myrmidons, Trust logo etched in their polished chests like matching battle scars. It was very imposing, if you planned on going through the front door. Front doors were for sucks. And Thin Man wasn’t one.He changed routes, loping around the structure, the tower always in his eye-line. Come on in, the water’s fine. He shook his head and cursed at himself. It was too easy, even if they weren’t supposed to see him coming. Lines of data seethed and pulsed like nerves or roots, spreading into the Weave at the base of the spire, becoming so small they disappeared. Only ripples like raindrops showed where the lines met the Weave. He paced and looked again. No sentinels; the place was empty as a news reader’s brain. All clear. He drove the sliver in and slid the link home.Two steps forward and he slammed into the wall. A thousand colors, all black, hit him like a jackhammer to the forehead. Thin Man recoiled. The connection was cut off with prejudice. That link was burned and if he was unlucky, they might even have flashed a location. Usually though, those sorts of rebuffs were pushouts, not a sneak peek into what was going on at the other side of the screen. This was a nightstick to the face, not a line of questioning. Go was not passed.--He spent the next twelve hours riding lightning until he pierced the gold wall. It had taken all of his tricks, even the Bashour clusters that he’d paid too much for. At least he said that at the time, but now they were worth the Total’s weight in gold. Not to force the door, but to emulate and blend. The last probe went in disguised as a flawlessly composed focus group report from a Swiss design firm. Thin Man could feel the cold Nordic perfection in its columns and rows of boring Helvetica. But what he found inside Leviathan wasn’t what he was looking for. Not even an hour later. Not even two or three.He swore at himself and stared at the screen. Fronds of unfolding data swayed in the ebb and flow of the Trust’s private shoal of the Weave, but none of it was any use to the man with the tattoo.CHAPTER 1CHAPTER 2CHAPTER 3CHAPTER 4CHAPTER 5CHAPTER 6

FULL BLEED: NO ACTION

Hell of a week this week, folks. On top of a last week which was a hell of a week. Tell ya, I'm getting a mite too old for this ridiculousness. But the world we live in now is all ridiculous all the time so I suppose I better keep being used to it.Wanted to talk a little about process, it being *squints at cloc* 5:20 pm on a Friday and this is the first real work I've done all week, thanks, world. I talked a little bit about this on my Twitter feed earlier this week, but let's dig in a bit more. And hey, if you read, I guarantee you that I'll give away at least one perfectly good writing idea. That stuff's like gold, right? Everyone wants ideas. Get an idea and the rest just sort of happens, yeah?Yeah.So I've mentioned that I'm working on a short story collection that ties into the HAZELAND series, entitled ASPHALT TONGUES. (Don't worry. I'm sure that the title will apply to at least one story in the book. I hope.) HAZELAND being the umbrella title for the series of books that starts with QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS but will grow into a whole bunch of related stories, some just shorts, some even being standalone novels. It's a place to play with a bunch of my favorite ideas as much as anything else. But don't worry, I won't just run a travelogue. They'll be actual stories. Promise.Short stories are something I approach totally differently than novels. A short story can be sustained from just an idea. Look at it like a single facet rather than seeing the whole diamond if that helps. So I start shorts off a single idea or a phrase that suggests an idea, something bigger than itself. Now these can be really small things. That's fine for a short story.But an idea by itself isn't a short story. It's just a little chunk of a bauble to play with, something to build a bigger thing around. Just don't ever have it come out like that, where the idea is right in the middle of the story and everything else is simply accreted around it like the grain of sand in the center of a pearl. It all has to feel like it's one continuous thing, even if what you started with isn't really what you ended with.Idea isn't story. Hell, setting isn't story either. A populated setting isn't necessarily a story though you might be able to pull a narrative out of it if you try.Anyways, here's an idea. Godzilla versus Cthulhu. Home-grown king of the monsters taking out the high priest of the great old ones mano-a-mano. Great, right? Hell of an idea. And easy enough to file the serial numbers off. Go, take it. Go with Godzilla. I ain't even worried about giving it away (because it's worth precisely what you paid for it.)It's neat. But it's not a story in the slightest. It's barely even a pitch.Sigh. Pitches. I'll talk about them another time.It's two monsters fighting in whatever setting. You can pull a narrative out of that, sure.But it's people who make a story into a story. And yeah, I guess you can try to personify Godzilla or Cthulhu enough so that you can pass it off as a story. I'm sure people have already (I told you it wasn't a thing worth paying for.) But without actual characters working through the story through their actions, you're not going to have a story.And as an aside, if I gave that idea (you can call it a prompt if you like) to ten friends of mine and myself to write out a storyline for, I guarantee you, you'd get eleven different stories. Sure, some elements might overlay (kaiju slugfest for one) but the execution would come off very very differently. And that's if we just kept it to the two major characters. If we went wide to a potential cast of human characters, then who knows what themes/ideas/concepts would be explored and eviscerated or elevated in the process? The execution matters, dig? And different artists are going to execute differently.The idea in a lot of ways simply doesn't matter. Sorry. It's just not that important without execution. I've got notebooks full of ideas. And maybe one day they'll become something more than that. I've got more ideas than I could hope to execute in my lifetime and they just don't shut up. A lot of 'em don't even get written down. I'm really not trying to have this come off as a flex, because it doesn't feel like one to me. It's just my yappy brain making connections.Okay, back to HAZELAND and ASPHALT TONGUES. I'll share with you an idea that I'm working on in one of the stories. Here it comes. It's a good one.Somewhere out there is a map to all possible maps.Yeah, I know. That's pure Calvino (if not an actual ripoff of Calvino, and if so, I'm sorry, maestro.) Now, that's an ephemeral, ineffable kind of magical realist idea. But it's not a story, right? Not unless you have a woman using that map to get around and collect all manner of seemingly unrelated artifacts and experiences to assemble something while she's being driven around by an increasingly uneasy and unsettled rockabilly unlicensed cab driver in his piecemeal nineteenfiftysomething Cadillac and he's signed on for the fare and really wishes he hadn't. That's almost resembling a story. There's some pieces missing. But it's certainly a narrative frame to work within.The hard part is sitting down and writing it out, making connections that are unexpected and being willing to jettison the plan when something better comes along. And who knows, maybe the narrative I described above won't happen. Maybe something better will come along or some weirdo connection that I never foresaw will be made and I'll just go off in that direction. That's a thing I try to allow to happen in short stories (novels, not so much or else I get myself in real trouble.)But the point remains, without humans in danger or growth or pain or struggle or cosmic realization, you're probably not going to have much of a story. You may have a narrative. Hell, you'll probably end up with a thing that people even want to read. But it won't quite be a story. That's where the rubber hits the road.Your ideas are useless until you turn 'em into stories.Anyways, clocking out for the week. Catch you on the proverbial flipside.

FULL BLEED: THE FOG IS FILLED WITH SPIRITS

This is more a note to myself than anything else, but I wanted to tip my hand as to upcoming projects that I'm supposed to be filling all my free time with. Here we go.BLACK TRACE - Timelined for this summer/fall. Digital-only science fiction. Currently being serialized at this blog. Click any chapter and you'll be able to read the whole thing from the beginning. Quick pitch: Ex-federal cop has a reckoning with his past in a fragmented Federal States.ASPHALT TONGUES-10+ story anthology in the HAZELAND setting, featuring some familiar characters and a whole bunch you've never seen before. Winter or spring of next year. Depending.MY DROWNING CHORUS-I want to say that this is coming in 2021, but I don't control the scheduling. The second book in the HAZELAND setting/series. I quibble about that because I don't see it being totally an interlocking giant series, but explorations of different parts of the same worlds/places.SHORT STORY COLLECTION-There's a few short stories which the rights have reverted on and I'm considering bundling them on their own.OLDER WORKS COLLECTED-I have a bunch of standalone novellas that I'd like to offer in a more competitively-priced package. I never sell any book for less than three bucks because Amazon doesn't deserve a 70% royalty rate off of no advance. No publisher does. But I would like to freshen up some of these older works and put them out as collections.THE HOWLING PIT-Want to get this one cleaned up some and then made ready for a possible paperback publication. Also have asked a friend to write a new foreword. Loose timeline on this one. Probably early next year.MIRROR WOLVES/GLASS WOLVES-Hope to start writing this one this year for Broken Eye books. No idea what publication timeline looks like. My guess is 2022 at the earliest, but like I said, that's a guess.I have other works that I'd like to develop, but it's too soon to really talk about 'em.

BLACK TRACE - Chapter 6

Yeah, I know. I said I wasn't going to put up another chapter. I lied.I might lie again.Rest of this week will be pretty quiet. Real life will be intruding and demanding a lot of time and energy. But I've got thoughts. Boy, do I ever.--CHAPTER 6Jake watched the skeletons of the chaparral pass by in the white glare of headlights. The moon was a crooked smile low on the horizon as he glanced at it through the rear screen.He couldn’t let it go. Something in him had clicked. The petty distraction of the bitcaster fishing for a story was already forgotten. Something more raw was eating at him now. Old memories started running again in tighter and tighter loops. Moments locked and relived like micro-animations stuck into advertisements at the edge of fitful sleep. He knew what was waiting, every time he blinked his eyes closed. The pleasure of the rear-view mirror held tight. He enjoyed it like picking at a scab, seeing how much he could peel off without bleeding, but then it would catch with a sharpness. He thought about bronze badges and the smell of black leather and cordite. The sound of boots scraping across concrete grated in his ears.But those weren’t the worst. No, when he really wanted to feel it, he’d think about perfume and the sound of her voice. Or maybe he’d let himself touch her skin and her mechanical pulse and hear the exploding china and glasses filled with white wine.That’s it. You got it in there, now twist it around. Go ahead, smell the antiseptic on the green walls of the ICU, listen to the perfect artificial rhythm of that heart. Feel her hand once more as you curl it into a fist…A sudden noise jabbed through the joyless reverie. Irritated, Jake said, “Receive.”“Jake?” asked a Kentucky-smooth woman’s voice. “You where the board says you are?”“Hey, Lois. Thought you’d quit. And yes, the board sees all.”League Registered Services was on the nosy side sometimes, but they paid promptly and the jobs they hooked contractors up to were only rarely shady. Their percentage was a small price to pay for steady income and avoiding the trouble of hunting up work. Someone always had a job they wanted doing and were willing to pay for, even on the wrong side of Joshua Tree.“Turns out that my landlord only wants cash, so here I am.” He could hear a clacking of keys on the other side. “I got a hot one for you.”“Hit me.” The desert in his headlights rolled by like fish bones in a flood.“All-State Medical transport. Post-departure protection contract. They’re invoking. Double pay.”“I bet they’re wishing they’d bought an escort before.”“And now they need someone to pull their fat out of the fire.” It almost sounded like “far”.“Where?”“Four and a half minutes east at current speed.”“They’re lucky I was in the neighborhood.”“They’re lucky anyone is,” she said with more than a little disbelief.“Okay. I’ll claim the job. Standard terms.” Jake ticked off the list in his head: fuel, ammunition, time, risk factors and that sweet post-departure bonus. Trouble was not knowing how hard he’d have to work to earn it, but that was part of the gig.“And when you finish that one, I got a whole sheaf of jobs from Long Beach south. I swear it’s like they save them for me.”“And you keep asking and making me feel bad for you because you haven’t figured out—”“Oh goddammit, Jake.” Her voice was clipped through the connection, but the irritation rang through. “You’re leaving so much money on the table it makes everyone hurt. People laugh at you, you know that?”“Then find me more jobs in places that I’ll go.” He breathed out his anger. Plenty of reasons not to go back, compelling enough to ignore the siren call of easy money. “Good thing the risk index on jobs out here pays so well, right?”“I suppose. If you don’t have any place better to live,” Lois snapped. “Only thing to worry out about here is rattlesnakes.”“And guys shooting at ambulances.” More clicking. “Processing. Filed. Payment on completion and clearance.”“I know you’re good for it.”“And what exactly do you do with all this hard-earned?”“Pay my bills and stay out of trouble. Goodnight, Lois.” He snapped the connection closed then pressed on the accelerator. The thrumming became an insistent roar. He killed the headlights and activated the IRiS. The landscape went dirty white on black, infrared beams bouncing invisibly but lighting up the HUD like early twilight. He wasn’t taking any chances. Paladin he might be, but there was enough wrong out there to take precautions.--Ten kilometers to the east, the ambulance’s nose was dug into the rocky hill at the side of the road. The rollers still flashed, coloring the land a lurid red and then plunging it into predawn black. Dust settling, only the slow issue of steam from the rumpled hood fingered along.Five bikes rolled out of the dark, riders admiring their new installation. They had followed the van since it left Blythe. The red cross spray-painted on its panels called them like a nail to the eye. Medical. Supplies and drugs for the taking, and probably not willing to shoot back. But they lost two men getting that part wrong.“Just that much more for us,” said the lead biker. He was a huge chunk of a man. Heavily muscled and scarred arms laid across chromed handlebars. He wore a denim jacket with the arms ripped off and woven chaps that were caked with grease and red dust. His freshly shaved head shone, skull tattoo on his scalp clean and bright. Nobody had crawled from the wreckage and they didn’t smell like Custers willing to make a last stand over whatever they carried.His 350 Iron Horse spat and snorted, idling badly. Dirty fuel and dust made it run worse standing than at speed. Grime clung to the oversized cylinder heads, hiding the pitted steel. Boss felt the heat coming off the cooling fins and the warm vibration of the road still ran through his body like the after-tremor of sex. Goddamn but he was a free man.Four other motors rumbled and died, one of them making a clattering noise of bad valves. The new silence was broken only the steam and the panting of the men after the takedown.“Halloran, Jones,” growled Boss. “Open our package.”“Eat it,” said Halloran. “You said they’d be lambs and now Boots and Clay ain’t going home.”“They just went home. Boots and Clay got anxious and stupid and too close. I got no room for stupid in this pack.” He pointed at the wrecked Chevrolet. “They went into that hill at sixty. If they’re alive, they’re not going to hassle us.”Halloran spat and ran a hand through his grimy Mohawk, bright orange in his headlight. He gestured to the other man and marched to the wreck, hand wrapped around a slab-sided 1911 Colt that still had a full clip. Jones held a crowbar that he could seemingly barely lift.Sand crunched lightly under his boots as he approached the ambulance. He took the bitten crowbar and started on the back doors. After a few fumbling and impatient seconds he threw the steel down, enraged. “It’s jammed,” he whined. Jones was anxious. He hadn’t even seen a fix in days.Time was something they didn’t have. Blueboys might be on their way if any were around to hear any distress call. They’d been paying attention, pretending that they gave a shit about these stretches of road again. It wasn’t like they’d just taken down a corporate convoy. This was a nobody. Everyone was jumpy and juiced on the adrenalin from the kill. Boss thought about the last hand grenade he had. It was a brand new F-5, right from a Cal-Intercept 40-mil launcher. It would do the job and he could get more if he made the right connections. Besides, you gotta use what you have now.“Halloran,” said Boss as he tossed the grenade. “Back door.”Halloran caught the grenade with his open hand and placed it carelessly on the ground at the back end of the wreck, jamming it under the door hinge. He twisted the pin, then scrambled away from the ambulance, skidding on loose rock and settling for lying face down just out of range of the blast.The grenade blew with a piercing flash and shockwave that went like a two-by-four to the face. The ambulance’s back door hung open like a loose tooth. Halloran clambered in.“Well… Look what we got here,” Halloran said, laughing. There was an un-oiled squeak of broken wheels and then a screech. Halloran emerged from the van, pulling what looked to be a stretcher, occupied.“The juice, man! Get the juice!” Jones whined.The woman on the stretcher didn’t seem to notice what was going on around her. She was breathing through a respirator and a series of tubes through her mouth and nostrils.“What d’you think, Boss? Meat on them bones.” He held up her arm like he was at market.Boss’ tongue snaked out and around his lips for an instant. “Drop her. Just grab the stuff, we haven’t got room.”“I got room for her,” said Nails with a laugh.“Drop it!” Boss growled. “Stick to what you’re good at.”Halloran shook his head at the lost opportunity. “Sorry, baby, it would have been fun.” “Grab the juice!” Jones’ voice bit like broken glass.“Oh, shut the…” Halloran’s voice dropped off. He held up a hand, demanding silence. “You hear that?” Both men craned their heads and listened. Under the wind there was a growl coming up on them.“Yeah,” grunted Boss. “Big engine, burner. Might be Cal-I.” He looked around. No lights. “Mount up!” he shouted.Halloran and the others ran to their bikes. Even Jones dropped his quest for the perfect fix and ran to his sidecar. They were kicking their engines over when it found them.Blue rounded the bend at 140 clicks per. They couldn’t even see dawn on the car by the time Jake was on them. When he saw the parking lights of the bikes, he slammed the spotlight on. Two million candlepower hit the bikers like the wrath of God burning away the night and any shadow. Anyone who looked Blue’s way would be dead blind for a solid minute. Jake held off on the fire, giving them a chance to be smart. He snapped the lights off after he sped past. No reason to give these buzzbomb jocks a free target.“You see it?” Boss asked. “Doesn’t sound like Cal-I.”“I couldn’t see anything ’cept that damn spot!”“Pull out! If he comes back around, hole him out!” They shook the dancing lights from their eyes and started up, tires kicking up rooster tails of sand and spent cartridges that glittered in the moonlight. Jones fired off a couple of shots with a .44, but they all went into the wall of fading white that played on his eyes now.“Knock that the fuck off until you can see him!” Boss roared. Boss took off on his bike, peering through the scope of his Browning’s camera, seeing nothing. The smell of burning alcohol flared through his nostrils as he clamped down on the throttle. Vodka was easier and cheaper than gasoline these days.Jake rode ahead for a few seconds. Then he braked hard, turned the wheel into a long drift using all the road he could grab. He slid around 180 degrees over the next seconds, then accelerated full back towards the cycles. Arming the three-barrel, he headed towards the rise where he could just see headlights of the oncoming bikes. The name on the back of the jackets flashed briefly through his memory, trying to recall if he’d seen them before.“Necros.” New name. New name on a long list.Jones and Nails pushed forward of the pack at Boss’ urging. Jones was half hanging out of the sidecar, hair wild in the wind, howling giddily at the moon. He fired his Kalash into the night sky, listening to the spent casings bounce along the tarmac.“Pay the fuck attention!” Boss yelled uselessly from behind. Jake drew a bead on the sidecar and fired a brief salvo. The tracers were phosphorous rail scratches through the black, easier to see as an afterimage. Ten slugs sank into the sidecar, ripping the metal and fiberglass to shreds. Jones never felt a thing.The dead weight of the sidecar threw Nails off balance as Jake fired again. This time he hit the engine, dead on. The explosion was instantaneous, following the jet of alcohol fuel sparking. The cycle was engulfed by a ball of white fire that splattered onto the road as well. Raw heat from the bathtub vodka igniting was the last thing Nails ever knew.Jake turned Blue’s nose to skirt the fireball and hit the gas. Blue rocketed forward. Tracers blazed away at the next target, another sidecar mount with an Arlington vehicular rifle that had finally gotten a shot off. The front wheel of the bike went up in a cloud of shredded metal and rubber. The bike pitched forward sickeningly. Jones and Halloran were thrown from their mount and onto the road, pavement their last kiss.Blue was doing 100 clicks per by now and gaining quickly. One of the three bikes remaining swung to the left, wheels almost on the rough shoulder. The rider opened up with a little machine pistol. It made a small popping noise, innocuous as a string of firecrackers. Slugs hit Blue’s side, doing little more than scratching the paint. Jake flicked the wheel to the right, just as the biker cut left. There was a thud of metal slamming metal as Blue clipped the bike. The motorcycle cart wheeled off the road and into the creosote.Two bikes left. One of them firing.Blue and the cycle charged each other. The biker was firing a pistol at the car, shots careful but useless from his shaking hand. Jake merely accelerated. The bike swerved to the right and fell into a long slide. Anyone knew that the odds of surviving laying your bike down were a lot better than playing chicken with multiple tons of automobile.That left one bike and its rider, the huge free man with a skinhead cut who looked to be slowing to a stop. Jake swung around to get the bike from the back, if it hadn’t taken off by then. He slowed Blue and turned to face whatever was still standing. Jake saw that the bald guy was just standing astride his bike, gazing in stupid awe.Guess that he isn’t used to targets that really fight back.Blue’s engine rumbled with low menace as Jake crept up to the biker, stopping just yards short of him. Jake switched on the spot and Boss felt a sting of heat. He squirmed in the light.A huge metallic voice boomed through Blue’s PA. “You Necros are scum and are not welcome on the road while I drive it,” Jake said. “Leave while you still can.”“Road belongs to all free men!” Boss said with a fool child’s petulance.“Free men oughta have something better to do with their time than jacking ambulances. Don’t you think?”Boss sat there in the withering light. Sweat beaded on his gleaming scalp. His pride was drowned by fear and humiliating defeat. He swallowed hard. The light snapped off. Afterburn lingered on his face like a blush.“Blow,” Jake said quiet-loud through the amplifier.“Necros!” Boss shouted, smothering his fear with volume. “Blaze!”Through the outside mike Jake heard someone get up and cough unhealthily. **Broken ribs. That’s if he’s lucky.**He watched the bikes move away slowly. One of them wove from side to side. It was a long ride to anywhere from here, specially if you couldn’t keep your balance. Once Boss was over the rise and out of the line of fire, his courage returned. “You lookin’ for a tag, paladin! And I’m gonna be the one who gives it to you!” Boss shouted over the radio. Inside Blue, Boss’ voice was small and tinny.But not tonight. This paladin isn’t dying tonight.--Jake sped back to the wreck and hoped that there would be someone to salvage. It was always better that way, finding someone alive. That way there was a reason to still be doing this. RegServ’s numbers always liked it, but all this would have gone down the same way even if he hadn’t been on the clock. Even if there wasn’t anyone alive, Slats or whoever else pulled up eventually would want to know. The light was still rolling its red and black dirge. It hadn’t managed to attract attention, but that wouldn’t last long. Activity this far out was sure to bring on some crazies around. They smelled an opportunity just like anyone would.There was nothing but the ambulance there, that and the woman on the stretcher. Jake stepped out of the car lightly, sweeping the area with the muzzle of his shotgun, even though the IRiS hadn’t shown anything a moment ago. Eyes like anything else could be fooled. He knelt over the stretcher and stopped for a moment. The wax mask of the woman’s face echoed. Just like Madelyne.He placed a hand on her carotid and tried to feel for a pulse. Nothing. She was dead. Still warm, but dead. He tore his hand away, remembering. Then he climbed through the open back door and up to the driver. Jake looked to the driver. He was a big curly headed Mexican or Apache maybe, strapped to the seat by a six-point harness. His helmet sat in his lap as if he’d only had the strength to get it off before it slipped from his fingers. He breathed shallowly, face still grimaced in pain, even in sleep. It was a lucky thing that he was alive at all given the violence of the crash.“Don’t worry, citizen,” Jake said, trying to be reassuring. “Just hold tight, I’ll get us some help.”The driver nodded weakly, eyes clamped tight. He had a broad-featured face that had seen a lot of miles.Static filled the headset as Jake adjusted the controls. He waited, one ring. Two rings.“Cal-Intercept nightwatch,” snapped a detached male voice.“Yeah. Is Sergeant Slatovsky there?”“Slats? Yeah. Hold on a second.” Static.“Slatovsky, speak up” said a deeper voice.“This is Jake. I’ve got a situation out here. I’m about twenty miles from Joshua Tree, east.”“Yeah, we picked up the call from RegServ. I’m listening.” Slats was also probably pushing screens at the same time. He didn’t like to waste time.“Got wounded medical personnel, one dead passenger.”“Deets?”“Aced by some cycle jocks. Necros. Five bikes, seven riders. They’re out of the picture now.” He reached for the switch to kill the lights, fingers fumbling across the dashboard. Electricals were fucked. He slapped the slider marked LIGHTS in block handwriting. Nothing.“Any trouble?”“They thought they were. But listen, this guy’s hurt pretty bad. I can’t move him myself and we’re in the open, lights burning.”“Yeah, gimme a couple minutes to get a car. Can you sit tight for a while?”“So far, sure. I can’t guarantee how long that’ll last.”“We’re rolling. Later.”Jake killed the connection, dropping the handheld right between a plastic statue of Jesus and a stuffed rattlesnake that were stuck onto the dashboard; kipple turned into a mobile shrine.“Sit tight, citizen,” Jake said. “We got help on the way.”The driver wasn’t listening.Jake walked back to Blue and climbed in. He knew he was being watched by now. The best thing to do would be to scare them off until Cal-I showed in numbers.There were any number in the kinds of fellow travelers out here in the nobody-gives-a-fuck. The most notorious of which were ghouls, who were real trouble. Ghouls like the Necros that he’d just sent scrambling. They were the gangs wanted on multiple counts of mayhem, anything from killing a peace officer to cannibalism to arson. They were experienced, murderous, and half the reason that Cal-Intercept bothered at all. Part cult and part chaotic insurrection, they were the blood on the asphalt. Luckily they were the exception and not the rule.Beside them, common outlaws were almost citizens. They’d simply outgrown the iceboxes and cities, whether by their own stubbornness or mistakes or refusal to play by someone else’s rules. They’d slipped through the holes in the net to scratch out lives in the desert simply because they didn’t fit anywhere else. Jake only could convince himself he was a hair away from that life. Then there were crazies. They’d given up, but hadn’t chosen to wage war on the old world. Crazies were the folk who lived wild up in the hills, out of the towns. Living in tribes and bands, they wandered through the desert or lived at the edge of towns, trading scrap for food. Nobody knew where they came from or how people could become so lost in such a short time. Crazies might be harmless or they might flip to ghoul status. It was difficult to tell their intentions beforehand. Most citizens other than junk merchants just avoided them, but crazies sometimes found things out there that most people wouldn’t have imagined. Treasure gets left behind, and ten pounds of gold stamped CREDITE SUISSE changes hands between a dirty group of wanderers and a lucky fuel depot operator. Chaco told that story with more than a little envy, giving it longer legs than most. Mostly crap, but sometimes there’s nuggets of wealth in the shit.The Federal States border was about a hundred clicks away, straight through on the sixty-two. Flags were known to cross the border into California on occasion, sometimes for trouble, sometimes for opportunity. An official embargo had halted trade between free California and the Federal States, but that didn’t stop enterprising parties on both sides from sometimes makings sales out in the nobody-gives-a-fuck. That last part being at the heart of the land.He activated the starshell, dialing in ignition fifty, lighting when it was halfway up the arc. The rocket shot straight out, up into the night, burning a red trail of flame behind. It flew for a few seconds, then burst into a silvery-white ball of shimmer. The desert lit up under the magnesium flare, brighter than ten full moons. Off in the distance Jake spotted some figures scurrying back to the hills. They’d be kept back for the duration. Jake saw one of the crazies through the gun-camera. He was a young kid, maybe fifteen, baby face darkened by dirt, not whiskers. His eyes became terror-filled deer eyes as light flooded the desert. They knew well enough that starshells were sent up so that shooters can see. No reason to stick your nose to sniff that wreck if its going to get shot off. Jake climbed back into the ambulance and took up a position to the side and just behind the ambulance driver, the Arlington lying across his hip. He counted the beads on a yellow plastic rosary to pass the minutes.--A half hour later, Jake was outside the wreck. He was shooting over the heads of group of some bold crazies who had crept up to check out the crash after the flare burned itself out. Jake was shooting a ten mil Berretta, ex-U.S. Special Forces issue that had somehow ended up in the glove compartment of the ambulance.The shots rang out clear and crazies scurried away silently. Next time they won’t be held off so easy. They’ll be getting hungry. Slats better get here soon, before I have to take off or start making the shots stick.There was a distant engine running in the stillness. Jake climbed back into Blue and waited in case it wasn’t Slats. He watched the sixty-two in from Joshua Tree through the vivid monochrome of the IRiS. The lead car was a Cal-Intercept cruiser, a modified Cutter Tornado with a 500 under the hood, completely uncivilized horsepower. It was bent like a hearse in the funeral light of the moon. A blocky van followed, in turn trailed by a tight clutch of motorcycle outriders, ready to dart out and warn off anyone who wanted to start anything.Jake waited until the cruiser rounded the bend like a black shark careening through still waters. It approached then stopped and murmured restlessly for a second before the engine cut. Jake opened the door, but didn’t step outside until the driver did the same. It was Slats.Sergeant Lou Slatovsky was a fifteen-year veteran of Cal-Intercept and he wore that service like a suit. His skin was well tanned, age lines and creases pronounced from years spent driving under the desert sun. He was a big, dark man who moved like a cop, with a sense of ownership. Though the time behind a desk weighed upon him now, making time pass faster. He looked at Jake for an instant then looked away. His eyes fixed on the ambulance.“Let’s get this guy out of here,” he said to the two other officers who’d clambered out of the dark van.Jake tried not to think too much about why Slats was out here. This wasn’t his gig. He drove screens now and taught the freshies how to do their jobs without getting shot up or eaten by inches in the desert. And he hadn’t walked up and grabbed Jake’s hand in a bone-crushing grip. Even when they’d first met, he’d done that. “You move him at all?” asked the medical officer. He was slapping patches on the driver’s cheeks and wrapping the guy’s torso in a black sheath of neoprene.“No, he was that way when I found him.” Jake turned to the stretcher where the dead woman lay. “Don’t waste your time,” Jake told Slats as he leaned over the woman. “She was dead when I arrived, maybe before.” Jake dragged himself away.Slats looked in the back of the ambulance and examined the shattered interior. “You said these guys called themselves ‘Necros.’ Buzz jocks?” Slats was businesslike, flat. They’d just met, so far as he was concerned.“Yeah. Small pack, five bikes. Now one or two. Couple of them had heavy stuff, Browning thirties.”“You’ll need to file a report.” Slats looked at the grinning moon in the lightening sky.“Shit. I file more reports that you do.”“You also shoot at more people than I do.”“Takes a fool to open up on a cop. I look easy.”The silence hung between them like the smell of rot, but neither would be the first to acknowledge it. Cops walked by, carrying a stretcher. The driver looked more comfortable, drugs taking him away to a better place than here. He looked weakly in the direction of Jake’s voice. Jake turned and walked over. “Muchas gracias,” the driver whispered. He smiled, basking in the glow of the painkillers. Jake wasn’t sure if it was he or the drugs being thanked.“De nada,” Jake replied.The cops loaded the driver and the woman’s body, now sleeved, in the back of the van. It was all business, no medical markings, nothing to make it a target. One of them stood by the door, waiting.“Sergeant,” said the cop, a tall young woman. “You coming?”“No,” Slats said, looking over at Jake. “I’ll be back in later.” Then he pointed at one of the cops and said, “You drive my cruiser back, and treat it nice.” Jake looked at Slats suspiciously as he watched the amber taillights fade into the distance. “You mind telling me what is going on?” He tried to tamp his curiosity down but couldn’t help it. Slats turned and looked at Jake like he had something to say but said another thing instead. “I need coffee like I haven’t needed it in ages. You want to go to Roy’s? Grab a cup of black and a bite?”Jake gave up. “Little early, but sure. You’re calling the shots.”“I only wish, man.” He cleared his throat like there was a bone lodged there. “See, they know who you are. They know and they want you back.”Jake didn’t even register it. It was one of those hits that he’d been waiting for so long that it just sank into concrete and didn’t even hurt.--Here's the following chapters for ease of consumption.The whole book should be along in early fall. Hopefully.

BLACK TRACE - CHAPTER 5

I meant to have a substantial other post up this week, but life interfered.Also, I may serialize the whole of this novel here. Why not. Not like it was gonna sell anyways.I may, however, not.--CHAPTER 5Eight years after.Jake awoke in the middle of the night, tasting kerosene and smelling burnt bones. It was all that night at the 1203 and all the nights after, good until it went worst. Out of the past, she watched him with green eyes from the corner of the mirror. He couldn’t take the staring any longer, so he burned her picture, even if it was the only one he had.The plastic took its own time to light. And as it did, it unfolded like black butterfly wings as the ink and varnish bubbled and melted in his sink.He went out for a drive. A message hanging in his little corner of the weave told him that Chaco wanted to see him any time day or night, so he headed west to Twentynine Palms first. --Chaco had taken over a MexPet station that had been built and then sold at a loss, but a gain to him. He left the signs in place, though the sun had beaten them and the plastic was crazing to a sort of smooth alligator skin composed of shallow curves.He sat behind the counter, his smooth brown hands resting on glass suspended over a collection of colorful lottery tickets like confetti minus a parade to fall on. His fingers drummed and then he gestured without thought. “I didn’t ever say that the dude lived here,” Chaco explained. “Just that he comes in every couple nights. You were the one who turned it into a guaranteed thing, Almo.”The bitcaster leaned there, against the rotisserie of shrimp dogs slowly roasting on a row of revolving metal cylinders. They sizzled audibly, or perhaps that was the simmering resentment which radiated out of his corner of the fuel stop. His time was being wasted.His glassman fingered one of the stack of skin magazines, covers blued with age. Perhaps the inside pages were still vivid. He wore blue-rimmed Satori Smooths, from maybe ten years back. Retro modeled, with rims and earpieces all big and chunky, like the early days of 24/7 camera glasses. The red lights were on, indicating that he wasn’t live. If he was, Chaco would have been over the counter and smacking him with that aluminum baseball bat. Feed the magazines out and they’re worthless.Chaco had traded a case of Cuerpo Blanco from Jalisco for the old smut, and he was figuring to make a profit out of the deal.“No touching,” he growled. “Those are pre-Bustout slicks. All those models are like prunes made with human skin now. Dig the photo compression.”He peered at the picture, looking for the telltale jaggies hidden in the fields of flesh.“Yes, sir,” Chaco said, launching into his pitch. “Those are all compiled from the original files and worth more than that shooter you’re holding.”“For jaypeg fetishists maybe. Not me,” the glassman replied.“ ’Fetishist? We got a scholar here,” he said with a laugh.“Yo, Snap. Give the man his space or his money,” growled the bitcaster. He tugged at the edges of his yellow-spotted red bowtie, the corners of which looked sharp enough to cut steel.The glassman sneered but backed away.“Have I not been good to you, Chaco? Have we not shared in one another’s successes?” The bitcaster pointed to himself with the pious grace of a televangelist. His trousers rode high on his waist and his white hound’s-tooth jacket was cut long, somewhere between solid citizen and Zoot. He had to ride the fine edge between sub cult pandering and mainstream acceptable if he wanted his feed to get siphoned up.“Hey, Almo, look—”“Don’t stream me with ‘Hey Almo’!” His face reddened and his lips tightened to an ugly slash before he spoke again. “Five hours out here in the ass end of California, not counting the drive. Five hours of your awful coffee and ibarra. Feel like I’m gonna piss out a worm. And what do I have to show for it?”Chaco caught the flash of blue hood reflecting the station lights in the corner of his eye. Not on time, but you didn’t hold guys like Jake to a watch and expect anything but a miss.“Almo.”“Goddammit! The Feds could fire rockets at us from here.”“Almo, that’s bullshit. Only ever happened that once.”The glassman watched his boss’ meltdown with a barely concealed glee. He thought about filming some of it, pull some crisp down on the side, but then he valued the regular check more than that.“Two more minutes and I’m going back to Riverside, you idiot! This is the last time I ever take up a lead from you!”The door opened with a faint scrape, tracing the arc on the lino tiles of the floor which had been dusty forever.The tall guy wore denims with weave panels underneath, jacket once black but now a faded smoke color. His hair was short and spiked up by itself, looking for a cut. He was skinny but not like a user, though there was darkness beneath his eyes. They were blue, cold in color but sharp. The guy glanced at the bitcaster, caught in mid-tantrum.“Hey, Chaco,” he said with the gravel voice of the never-asleep. “You wanted to see me?” He brought his eyes over to Chaco, locked them, then flicked over to the outsider. Eyebrows up.Chaco shrugged in return, too meek.“Who’s this guy?” Almo demanded. “Hey, you don’t like my cut? You got a problem with the jacket?”Jake shook his head slowly. “I could care about your clothes. But your yap is a little shrill first thing in the A.M.”“Hey, lowlife,” he started. “Nobody wants it.”The tall man turned away, back to Chaco, who looked as if he’d been watching a pile of money burn up. “So what did you need?”“I wanted you to, ah, meet someone. You know, meet and talk.”“Is a favor or a cash money job?” He fished out a slim roll of League bills and put it on the scratched counter. “Here. Fill on five.”Number five pump was hydrogen that only dispensed liters at a time. It was always a pain in the ass, but it was better than having the whole works go up in a column of fire. Didn’t burn long, but it did burn like a son of a bitch.“Cash job. Right Almo?” Chaco pointed his voice at the fuming video host.Jake craned his neck around again to look at the guy. Then he caught the lenses on the glassman’s face. “No,” was all he said.Almo melted in realization, irritation bled out in seconds, replaced by pleading. “But. Oh, shit. Oh shit. I’m sorry,” he said with a slick politeness. This was the guy. Asphalt justice. Blue driver. The paladin.He didn’t measure up to the words and video that Almo had seen. This was a guy, a tired guy, a drifter who’d taken root and a shine to driving roads that everyone else avoided. “Sorry or not. No,” Jake said to the host then turned back to Chaco. “You know better than this, man. I don’t do screens.”“Always a first time,” he offered. “Listen, Almo is straight up and he’s offering crisp.”“Yeah, so does RegServ, and they keep their mouths shut. No.”“Hey, look,” Almo said, fumbling for the reset button. “We got off all mixed. Can we slam the redo button on this conversation?” He offered a hand that held steady, showing no signs of the outburst from a moment ago.“The minute that those glasses go black, this talk ends,” Jake warned. “Fair.”“Go ahead. It’s your money,” Jake said. “But talk outside. I got a car to fill.”They stepped out into the cool of the very early morning. There wasn’t yet a band of light to the east and the strip of the Milky Way glimmered above them until they got to the fuelling bays. Blue stood there, hood going on forever, broken only by the crescent cut for the gun-barrel’s traverse. Squared lines indicated power over grace. The car rode low, but not like some city creeper that couldn’t even make it over a speed table. The wheel panels had been dropped and flared to make the tires a less tempting target, but not so much that the lines were broken.“Takes a man with a backbone to drive American these days,” Almo joked.“Federal you mean, right? They’re still driving American in Havana. Good steel lives forever if treated correct.” Jake walked around to the driver’s side and worked the fuel door, then the cap. The compression chamber let loose with a low hiss as the remnant vented before the fueling coupler was fitted.“That’s a Challenger, right?” Almo said, pointing at the car then fumbling for the model in his head.“Charger,” the cameraman corrected, hands at his hip pockets.“Your man’s right. You aren’t.” Jake took up the hose, rested it on the mount and then turned it so that the clamps activated. The system re-pressurized with a sharp hiss.“I miss the smell of gasoline,” Almo said.“You aren’t that old,” he shot back. “Or are they still getting enough up out of TJ to gas up hot rods these days?”“My unk. He used to be a jammer. Still keeps one in his garage.” He peered under the hood as the taller man opened it up and began to check things.The engine block was clean enough to perform surgery on. “So long as he doesn’t let the cops catch him, right?”“Nah,” Almo said. “They got an oldies week. City even pays for him to fill up the tank once and drive around downtown. Lotta cameras out then. Lotta hits.”Jake bit his lip then spoke. “Good for your unk.” He replaced the dipstick, which was sheathed in a fine amber sheen.“Dang, that oil’s cleaner than my suit.”He set his jaw, as if biting his tongue, then ran his fingers over the ammo chute for the three-barrel minigun. The brass glinted in the lightcloud of the bay. He did it all by touch, not looking at the machine as he checked it. “Look, enough with the sweet talk… Almo, right?”The bitcaster swallowed hard and ran a hand through his pompadour like he was on a date, nervous, undirected.“So what is it you want? You need me to escort you guys around for a story or something?” Jake’s irritation was being buried in the litany of tasks that he was finishing up while new fuel got pumped into his car. He dropped the hood down and pressed hard to lock it into place. It sounded solid, like it could drive right through the building behind him.“Sorta,” Almo said. “We wanted to do a story on you. You know, the paladin.”Jake couldn’t keep from laughing. “Hate that goddamn word. Comes from a kid’s game, you know that? Older’n both of us put together.” He disengaged the fueling clamp and snapped the hose once, starting the retractor.“Okay, we won’t use it. We just want to ride along with you for a night, maybe two, depending.” He looked as if he was searching for a way to have said that more elegantly. “I mean, this story blows up, we could all be looking at a big pile.”“Oh, but then I’d have to be on a screen. A lot of them. Not interested.” He closed the door to the fuel hatch and waited expectantly.“No?”“I’ll make you the same offer I made to that guy Tsui, from Japan. And to Henrietta Walpurgis who came all the way from Stuttgart with her hundreds of devoted viewers. I’ll give you the same offer.”Almo and his glassman glanced at one another wondering if they were being set up or if maybe this was a real chance.“You can follow me. But you gotta tell me that you’re doing it.”“That’s it?” Almo asked. He ran it around behind his eyes. That could be just as good. Maybe it wasn’t putting a face on him, but there were ways around that.“Sure. You can follow me. But I’m not going to slow up for you. And most likely I’m going east from here. Depends if I get a call or not.”“Past Joshua Tree?” the cameraman asked. His dark skin lost a little color, but maybe that was the off light from the fueling bay. Lightclouds sucked the color out of things, too clean, too bright.“Yeah, maybe.”“Solo?” he asked, trying not to gape but forgetting his manners.“Jesus, you two are acting like it’s driving into enemy territory or something.” Jake flicked the excess water off the squeegee and it glittered like diamonds for an instant in the high-frequency lights. “Maybe you should go, learn a thing or three.”“I already know that fire’s gonna burn me if I stick my hand in it,” the glassman said, ready to step back. “We ain’t packing or all that armored.”“Oh, that’s right. From the big city,” he replied with a smirk, surprised that they made it even as far as they had.“So what can we shoot?” Almo asked like he was actually going to do it. He looked like he was on stage, standing in those bright lights. And being on stage, all he had to was say things and people would eat them up. He might even believe it himself.“Whatever you can see,” Jake said. “I’ll drop my plates for the night so you won’t have to post-blur them, or somehow, you know, forget to.”Almo was drooling. The cameraman saw it and almost lost his lunch. This was crazy talk. It was all fun and games, even as far east as Twentynine Stumps, but further east and Cal-I forgets to patrol.“Almo, listen…”“Shut up, man! Just shut up.” he stifled another tantrum and then pulled himself together, ready for a close-up. “Sounds good, Jake. Sounds good.”“‘Mister Culver,’” Jake corrected. “And you can call me anything but that when the video rolls.”“Done.”Almo stood there like he was forgetting something. “Hey, you know, we’ve got to sign papers and profit-sharing plans and all that. You know, standard stuff. Looks like the RegServ papers.”Jake smiled and let it hang. “There ain’t gonna be any profits.”Almo was incensed for the moment that he could feel it, before he figured out that the rug was being pulled out from under him. “Wh…Why?”“Well, first rule is there’s never any profits,” he said. “Second is that there’s no story because neither of you are going to follow me when I go out of this parking lot and turn left. But to humor you, I’ll slide the plates down in case you get the guts to go wild.” He opened the door and sat down, watching them standing there. “Go on. Offer not to be repeated.”Then he flicked the ignition on with a jingling of keys and Blue’s engine rolled low and throaty and sinister, sound echoing off the flat concrete planes of the fuel stop. The car was the color of the night sky before dawn.The door closed slow, like he had all the time in the world. He pulled out, lingering in the pool of light for a moment before sliding onto the sixty-two and heading eastbound.He looked into the rear view and didn’t even see them pull out of the lot, much less make that left turn.

Yes, I make memes.

Only my memetic content is...unusual.Also, it betrays what is probably best regarded as an uneasy relationship between myself and criticism/commentary/what have you.And away we go!I just made the above last week. Yeah. Getting real tired of death of the author being used as a way to sidestep responsibility of interpretation. I'll have more to say on this later on, but not in this entry.Here's some Garth Merengi (no I've not seen the whole show, just the first episode, sadly.)All in good fun, I promise.Anyways, I've read a little Camus and that makes me smart or something.Oh yeah, had fun with the "Is this..." guy, too.And while not quite a meme, it's close enough. Remember, kids. Sacred cows make for the best hamburger.

FULL BLEED: THE SHELF

So in the midst of cleaning up the office yesterday and doing some shelf rearranging, I took the opportunity to update the shelf of my own work that I maintain. Oh sure, it's a monument to vanity, etc etc. Sure it is.Let's break down things and dig in a little. Uh, left to right.The first five volumes are all self-published work, in this case through CreateSpace, which I don't think even exists any longer, having been absorbed by Amazon, if memory serves. Links will take you to the book's Amazon page, by the by. Do as thou wilt.HIGHWAY 62 REVISITED is a collection of my non-column writings from around 2003 to oh geez, I want to say 2014 or so? There's a lot of talk about comics there, most of it from the first couple iterations of my comics and other stuff blog, Highway 62. That all started on Blogspot, along with my pretty-frequent posting on places like Millarworld and various comics-related Delphi fora (though not the Warren Ellis Forum's first incarnation, which literally shut down the day I looked into it.) There's still some interesting stuff in there. It's still mostly a mess of brain drippings. I think I maybe printed three or four of these, though it's still available as an ebook. (The print volumes were prohibitively expensive, on the order of twenty-five bucks apiece). RAGNAROK SUMMER is my I guess second completed novel, probably finished in 1994 or 1996. It's a weird cyberpunk fantasy Norse gods pantheon thing, where they go through Ragnarok and come out the other side winners. And everything is perfect for a hundred years only it isn't. Again, still available as an ebook. I undertook rewriting it at some point and may come back to it, but it seems like a lot of fuss for a thing that doesn't have a lot of heft.TUG ON THE RIBBON AND OTHERS is my first fiction collection, featuring the story that gave the title (which is out there on the web if you look around, I'm sure -- William Gibson liked it and that was good enough for me.) There's I believe four stories in there, at least two of them are any darn good. Still available as an ebook.BLUE HIGHWAY is an earlier version of BLACK TRACE, and there's a couple copies of this in circulation on the used market, apparently. The algorithm wanted to price them at four hundred bucks or some ridiculousness. Not that I'd see a nickel of that stolen value. Doesn't matter, a better version of that will be hitting the streets in not too long a time.THE COLLECTED FULL BLEED is, like it suggests, a collection of my FULL BLEED columns that I wrote starting in 2003 and ran on-again/off-again until 2010 or so I want to say. First at Broken Frontier (for which I got not one nickel and they got all the ad revenue) and then later on at the Comics Waiting Room, which I wrote out of love more than anything else. I think they're still interesting and idiosyncratic looks at the comics business from those years. But of course I would. I might even have print copies of this still, but yeah, you can still get the ebook of this easily enough.What should be on this shelf but isn't is a collection entitled BLINK AND OTHER STORIES, which are more horror-related, but as it turned out, none I loved so much that I wanted to put up in a printed version. You can grab the ebook, though. Go ahead, be in select company and get yourself a copy. Additionally, DUSTBEARER (two short fantasy stories, yes, I write fantasy) is without a print edition. THE HOWLING PIT really should have a print version but that would necessitate some rewrites and probably additional material. Hmm. THE HOWLING PIT, by the by, is my view on the self-publishing landscape as well as writing in a time of absolute freedom. Hint: it's not as much fun as you'd think.And now we get to the slim section of work that I've actually been paid for, all from Broken Eye Books. Links go to their site, so buy direct, eh?QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS you should already know about. If not, it's the story of Cait MacReady, punk rocker and librarian and art forger in early eighties Los Angeles. Tired of copying other people's works, she decides to write one of her own and that's where things get weird. Because the shadowy group known as No Tomorrows not only knows about the book, apparently before it was even written, but their Queen wants it for herself. It's filled with a lot of things that I love, and I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to write it for folks who can get it in front of others.IT CAME FROM MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY, an anthology of weird horror/sf, featuring my story "The Kingdom of Is," which explores the relation between monstrosity and language and how each is chained down by the other. That came out just a couple months ago and I'm sure you'd love a copy, if not for my story but for the host of others contained within.TOMORROW'S CTHULHU from Broken Eye features my first sale to an anthology market through the slush pile, that being the short story "Chunked" that I wrote in what 2012? I'd have to look. Hmm. Shows this version came out in 2016 but I know the story was written a little while before that. Anyways, it's just a simple story about an industrial trawler hunting down the last avatar of the elder gods and turning it into processed food for a hungry planet. There's no other meaning or allegory there at all. Promise.Ah, STRANGEWAYS. Weird western, featuring ex-Union officer Seth Collins as he crosses the country through the haunted frontier. First volume is cowboys versus werewolves, second is cowboys versus vampires. Worked with some great artists on these (Luis Guragña and Gervasio and Jok from Estudio Haus in Argentina.) I'm glad they're out there but folks, comics are not for the easily buffaloed. Both volumes are still available at my Bigcartel store. Not through Amazon because I got tired of being absolutely fucked by their order/sales practices. I was losing money on each order, so nope. Not doing that. I keep toying with the idea of doing a digital comics release, but I'd have to get the book colored and that's on the order of a couple several thousand dollars to have it done well and I lost enough money on the original run. Besides, weird westerns sell to audiences of hundreds, not thousands.There's some saddle-stitched pamphlet versions of various stories. "Through the Limbs" and "Tug on the Ribbon" and some STRANGEWAYS ashcans. I keep meaning to do a full collection of the uncollected short stories, but I printed up a few of these to take to shows. You remember science fiction and comics shows, right?And now there's a whole bunch of what amounts to private press photo books, all through Shutterfly. Four Intrapanel volumes of close-up photography of old comic books, looking at the alchemy of cartooning and cheap printing and how sparks were squeezed out there. Five volumes of CURRENT 20, which are filled with day-to-day photography that I used to make up for Christmas gifts for family and friends. FULL TILT, which is a book of pinball table photography. And finally, three volumes of photographs taken in LA, one of which spanned several years of digital cameras and I think even some film photography dating back to the 90s.Anyways, these are an expensive hobby, and unfortunately only exist to fill out the shelf.Oh, the CDs? Yeah, my work is on those. TO JUPITER AND BEYOND is the only place that the Roswell Incident's music was available for a long time (outside the DRONEON tape compilation) before I put some of the work up on Bandcamp. The other discs are live shows or rehearsal tapes and I think a pretty clean master of TRANSANTARCTIC, the only proper Roswell Incident LP, with Chris Barrus and I recorded by Brian MacDonald in November of 1996.) Anyways, what's up on Bandcamp is mostly free to listen to, pay what you want for downloads.Yeah, I'm not putting up the five books that I was an uncredited co-writer for. Sorry. Rules are rules. I doubt any of you have ever read any of them nor would you be able to recognize my work in them if you did. I wish those had worked out better than they did, but I am who I am and that's all that needs to be said about that.Yeah, at my age, I'd liked to have put up a shelf that was twice this. I'd like it even more if I hadn't had to self-finance the vast, vast majority of this work. That's how we define success, right? It's okay. You don't have to say it out loud, so long as you understand it.I'd like it if I had more news about other projects at this time, too. But I simply don't. BLACK TRACE is the big thing coming down the line, and that's not brand new work. I'll probably do a collection of short stories now that they've reverted to me, as well as some that never got published. But in the meantime, I need to get back to work on the stories for the ASPHALT TONGUES collection of stories from HAZELAND. I anticipate that this will be self-published as well, but perhaps I'm misjudging.Back a little bit later this week.