Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 9

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.

BLACK TRACE - chapter 4

Two years following.The 1203 Club didn’t belong in Orange County, yet there it was as plain as a thumb in an eye. It should have been built in Riverside or Fontana, in the shadows of a dead steelworks or next to one of the Inland Empire’s auto graveyards. If there was a square drawn out of Santa Ana, Westminster, Garden Grove, and Fountain Valley, the 1203 would have been right in the center of it, just off Bolsa Avenue before it became 1st Street.“1203” was what they used to label gasoline in those giant mirrored tankers, the rolling bombs going down the freeways, just waiting for a chance to go off. One of them would take out an entire six lanes with the flames, and the oncoming traffic would be shut down so that citizens didn’t kill themselves staring into the boiling smoke and burning concrete. Karla had seen it herself, river of cars frozen at Edinger on the Four Oh Five.Karla Castillo-Aguilar took the bar over from her father and fought the same battles he did. Crooked cops, well-meaning family types, career-minded council members, heavies squeezing. All of them wanted something from the 1203: money, respect, or just to go the hell away. He hadn’t, not in twenty years, and Karla wasn’t about to either. This wasn’t just a bar, but a home, for a family that might never have had one. All you had to do to walk in the doors was to love. Cars mostly. You could love people who loved cars, that would work too.The front parking lot was miles of lovingly polished paint and metal gleaming under the banks of LED lightcloud fixtures. But the real action was in the back lot, away from prying eyes. Out back, the real blood would show their current projects. School was conducted back there, where the fresh-faced, should they be lucky enough, could sit at the feet of masters and learn how any damage short of fiery disintegration could be undone. Frames could be unbent, and the crippled could be made to run again. Top fuel, nitrous or pure 93 leaded smuggled up from Baja. All kinds welcome, so long as you show the love.Of course, love was a tricky thing given the other ties that dug into people’s lives. Sons of the Tiger and Los Coyotes, Spider Sevens and No Tomorrows might love their speed, but they hated each another. And that was without having to worry about all the up-and-comers who hadn’t yet signed compacts and might do something stupid like start a fight so they could earn some teeth. Smart ones didn’t fan any flames. Dumb ones might do it on the grounds once. Nobody had done it twice. Giving up your wheels for a month as atonement, with the option of working for free for a week once the stitches came out, convinced the young ones that there was such a thing as bad attention.Still, every Friday night was a new trip. And word got out that the 1203 had been featured on some undercover clipshow again. There would be a whole bunch of people who didn’t understand the rules coming through the door. Season would be open.She poured a whiskey and traded it for a sheet of blue crisp held in a sanded-oak hand, knuckles scarred and enlarged from a lifetime of torqueing. The gearhead stared at the magenta and blue and silver Edelbrock print like it was a centerfold or something holier, then he took half at a gulp.**At least Jake was here tonight, she thought as she nodded him through the door. Guy was a mirror; nothing stuck to him and you couldn’t see past him at all. He walked through the brass and swept the room, jutting out his chin at Jason and his ’clave over in the corner. They sat under that giant canvas, the one that Robert Williams called Hot Rod Race, which always felt like disaster, until you remembered that half the cars were going to leave the cops and their big Chevrolet in the dust. The horror of that yellow Ford with the flame job, though, that put a chill in everyone who lingered over it.Jason laughed at that danger. He relished sitting under the painting, thumbing his nose at the second of weightlessness he might get before tumbling to his death. Jason with his devil smile and almost gold skin and jet black streaks of hair, Jason was going all the way. “Sit your ass, man. Get you wetted down,” he said with a flash of white teeth.Jake did so, slow and wary. But that was Jake. He never jumped into anything easily, even friends. So far as anyone knew, he’d been born at age twenty and three, steering wheel in his hand and a toolbox in the seat beside him. Make up any story you like, because it was no closer or further to the truth than he’d ever tell.“Yeah. Bourbon, clean.”Jason laughed silently at that. “Like you’d order anything else. Hey, Karla!” He yelled over the noise of the bar. “Get something single-barrel back here!”“Splashing your chips? Since when do you reach for that top shelf?” His hands rested on the table edge then gripped for a moment and he relaxed.Jason’s smile pushed his eyes so far closed that they looked like razor slices over his perfect cheeks. “Since I got signed, man.”“Bullshit.” Jake waited for his drink.“No joke. Did it this afternoon. Energy Tijuana. Western Pacific circuit. No more underground.”“Swimming with the sharks. No more small pond,” Jake said as he slapped Jason’s hand then they brushed knuckles like brothers.Karla set the almost egg-shaped bottle on the table. A pewter horse in mid-stride capped the cork. The seal was still intact. Toppest shelf.“I’d say on the house, but now you’re all crisped-up so I should make you pay double.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and the ink on them became a jumble of tattooed gears and pistons over the red cotton tank top.He sat back arms out and empty, all but pouting. “Oh come on, T. You know I’m good for it.”Her eyes smoldered at him. “Last time I tried to collect on a debt from an ET driver, I got a bucket full of nastygrams from a lawyer. Cash or go wash glasses for the rest of the night.” Her eyes smiled but her tone didn’t. The black lipstick smirk was evenly balanced between the two.Jason grumbled and tossed a thin pair of League twenties to her. “Bring your crew back here when you’re in town, big-time,” she said as she tucked the bills into her back pocket. “Just pay when you play.”He poured out two big, fat ones. Jake eyed his cautiously. “You know I ain’t finishing this tonight.”“And you’re still a goddamned baby.” Jason knocked half his back and then tilted his head further, letting the rest drain.“Sticks and stones, man.”The crowd was a little rowdier tonight. A lot of folks dressed nice, and not just nice for the 1203. They smelled after-party, too loose for Stone Velvet but way too nice to be here. Their wardrobe implied ownership of wherever they happened to be standing, cut and pressed, the sheen of the new. They spent too long ordering and made a show of the money they spent. Karla stood impatiently in front of a couple who looked as if they were reading the labels one by one and finally told them to tap her once they’d finished.“So, what’s with the fresh faces?” Jake asked. “They’re not ET legal or fans for you, right?”Jason shook his head, lips pursed. “You come to them, not the other way around. Karla told me that the Twelve-Oh was on OC Uncovered earlier this week. Clips got passed around a lot. Guess we’re it for tonight.”“At least it won’t last,” Jake said.“Never know what’s going to stick until you can’t pull it off.” Jason poured himself another.“Nah, these kids are just out slumming. They’ll find some other local color for next week. I…” Jake’s voice trailed off.“Oh, that’s no damn good,” Jason said as he looked at the silently gaping Jake. “Shut your mouth, son. You’re gonna get flies.”Jake tried to compose himself, but it was like holding onto oiled chrome. The woman had long black hair that was straight and loose and glossy like the rain on the road. She smiled at the man next to her, but her green eyes were tight at the corners and then the smile evaporated like gas left in the open. It wasn’t the room that bothered her.“You know her?” Jake asked. “She’s not a regular.”Jason narrowed his eyes and peered at her. “Don’t think so. She’s a little fancy for the Twelve-Oh and the guy she’s with is… Shit, I don’t know what he is.”“I’m sure you can find a word. Just try harder.”The boyfriend wasn’t a big guy, but he stood like it, taking up more room than he needed to. His denim was clean and crisp to the eye, walked out of the store with them on an hour ago. The leather jacket hanging on his shoulders was probably real and equally new. It was as if he’d heard it was dress-up time and ran out for a fresh outfit to show off. The bar light shone off his glowing brow. He was lit already and looking for more.“So, hey, Jake. Take your eyes off the unattainable for a moment and listen to me.”“My ears work just fine, Jason. Talk.”“Look, I wanted to ask if maybe, you know, you’d want to come with me.” He couldn’t even manage it as a question. Jake picked up the glass and pointed with a finger while bringing his hand around. “What? To TJ? What do they have that’s better than this?” It stopped without a shake at the brunette.The alcohol had loosened Jason up, but not enough to hide the trace of shame that came at the asking. “You and I, man, we both know who the better driver is.”He finally took a sip out of the glass, lips staying tight after. “Better ain’t the issue, is it? Racers aren’t just about racing, but about the after-show and pre-race-show and the face in the glass, right?”“Yeah. And I’ve never known someone who dislikes the glass as much as you do. Hell, I can’t even point my phone in your direction without you shooting me the look.”“I’m camera-shy. Not a big deal.”“Okay, so then you don’t have to drive. I need a tech who knows the black magic.”“Bullshit.”“So what if it is?” Jason reached for the glass and realized it was empty, then veered his hand away like it was hot metal. “Just, man, you’re better than the little day jobs you’ve been pulling down. And I’ve seen you…”“Seen me what?” Jake asked, wanting to look away, both for the raw nerve being touched and to see the woman back at the bar before she walked out on her boyfriend.“I’ve seen you throw races. Hell, two months ago on the Criver near the 39. You all but spun out at the end so that douchebag Martin could take first place.” His smile was gone and his eyes were black and wide in the bar’s low light. “I didn’t know why then.”“But maybe you do now?”“U-ground Races had lenses there.”Jake took as big a hit of bourbon as Jason had ever seen. “Whatever you think it is, you’re wrong. And I’ll say ‘thanks, but no’ to your offer. Finally found a place that I fit in. Not real interested in moving anymore.”“Limited time,” Jason urged. “And my answer’s still no. Pretty soon I’m going to shave the ‘thanks but’ off it.”“Okay, okay.” Jason raised his hands as if getting ready to block a punch. “I was just trying to spread the butter around a bit, you know?”“I appreciate it,” Jake said, eyes sliding back to the bar, back to the unlikely pair. “Just get me some tickets when you’re at Riverside.”“Riverside? Since when do you go that far east.”“Since they opened it up as the only no-limit track closer than Rosarita.” He wasn’t looking at Jason anymore. He couldn’t. The show going down at the bar was well-timed. He was done talking and didn’t want to be rude, but he didn’t know how long he could keep saying no without a damn good reason.Karla eyed the boyfriend as he pointed out a black glass bottle of tequila. He waved a sheaf of money around like he was buying the air. The woman at his side made a face and pushed away from him. She’d had enough, which Jake understood. He wanted to flatten the guy and he’d only been in sight for ten seconds now.Karla was bringing down the bottle against her better instincts, but those bills would spend fine long after the asshole had blown out of the bar. She pulled up two glasses alongside it.The boyfriend didn’t bother, popping the cork out of the Mano Negra and taking a pull out of it before looking around, remembering that he hadn’t come in alone. He nudged the black-haired woman and poured two drinks. The tequila was almost clear, only a slight brown tint from the aging hanging in the glass. He leered and then downed the drink.She refused. And by the time that he figured that out, he began to get angry.Jake was up and pushing away from the table before the guy understood what was happening. The crowd was loud and chattering, too many tourists with open smiles, shitting like seagulls everywhere they stood. The regulars were beginning to smell it, knowing that this wasn’t so much a safari but a sightseeing trip. Their patience for being the main display was at an end. The boyfriend was about to become a very convenient target. And while he could afford the bridgework that he was about to have bestowed upon him, Jake wondered if there might be a better way, one less likely to get the Twelve-Oh shut down for a week while OCPD cleaned it up. Jake glanced at Karla and saw she knew it too, but she was also thinking, “So worth it.”The crowd watched Jake approach and dropped their conversations. The regulars only knew him as a racer, as the guy who built Blue out back, out of desert junk and something approaching love. He’d never started a fight, not once, but maybe he was going to do it now. Out of respect, no money was changing hands, but some onlookers were placing bets in their heads.Like an occupying army, the visitors kept up their chatter, oblivious as they talked and sketched out the scene on their glowing handhelds. Blue-white LED flashes went off in a nimbus around the room.The boyfriend was scowling at the woman who’d come with him. She hadn’t touched her drink and he’d half a mind to make her. Instead, she smiled without warmth and splashed the liquor at him. The air in the bar got sucked into a hundred simultaneous breaths.Jake was a step or two out of reach. The scene had changed too quickly for him to catch up to. Not that he’d expected anything like this.Her face was clear and open, not screwed up in panic. She was very direct in what she was doing, ready for a follow-through and even for him to react. Feet apart, she twisted her body into the blow and brought the heavy bottom end of the glass down on the bridge of the guy’s nose. Dulled by the booze and the whatever else, his arms were too slow in coming up and stopped absolutely none of it. He stood there, dripping in three hundred dollar tequila and wondering what the hell had just happened. When the pain hit, it hit like the Gold Coast Zephyr at two hundred per, gliding on maglev track.She stepped back out of reach, arms up at her sides, blocking out space to move and react should he do anything other than wonder at how his nose had gotten itself broken. Spilled tequila fell off her, but it didn’t change her focus. She’d just picked a fight with a man who had fifty pounds on her and screwing around wasn’t a winning plan.He gingerly touched the contusion, so high up it was almost between his eyes and was thinking about maybe getting mad.“You!” Karla shouted. It split the thick hush of the crowd like the roar of an alcohol-fueled dragster. “You are cut the fuck off. Get out of my bar!” “Dy dose,” the guy whimpered. “Bish broke dy dose.”“And you’re lucky that’s all you got,” the black-haired woman said quietly. “So why don’t you do what she said and jet?” She wasn’t bluffed or blustering. She didn’t have the power of six bodyguards in Italian silk at her back, either. Whatever she was pulling down, whatever juice she had, it was all from her.Jake stood in quiet appreciation. It wasn’t hard to find tough women, even tough girls, out here. But to be so quiet about it, to not mess around and announce what you were going to do, but instead do it, that was worth notice.The ex-boyfriend scrunched up his face as unpleasantly as he could. It didn’t take much to make him ugly. “Your fader’s godda hear about dis. He’s godda hear!”She smiled wicked enough to bring Jake right to his knees. “That’s it,” the woman said. “You go cry to my daddy. Go do that.”The dude looked around as if the room were on fire, tears streaming out of the corners of his eyes, lost quickly in the alcohol glow. There were a couple snickers, some stifled and some wide in the open.“Yeah, go cry to my daddy, too,” someone called from the back, giggling. “Hey, buddy,” Jake said with ease, dialing things back. “Look, why don’t you sit down on your car outside for a minute and sober up before trying to drive home. Cops like to sit on Bolsa and deuce drunks. They like shiny cars best. It’s like catnip for ’em.”“Fuck you,” he said as if Jake was the waiter who’d brought him a sandwich with half a turd on top. “Fuck all of you lowlifes. I could buy dis place and drow you all oud.”“Not for sale, champ,” Karla said. She smiled brighter than one of OCPD’s helicopter searchlights. “And certainly not to no crybabies like you.”The drunk glanced sidelong at the woman, who stood easier now, but hadn’t dropped her guard yet. Then he flinched at her, trying to get her to start something. Maybe he had a weapon, or maybe he was stupid enough to actually think that she wouldn’t beat him right out of his skin. She stood without motion, only pursing her lips at him.That was enough. He swung, clumsily, wild, fueled by incoherent rage and stung pride and the slow belief that there was only one way for an idiot like him to try and gain face in the eyes of the crowd. She sidestepped and let him stumble into the red vinyl seat just behind her. He flew forward, trying to adjust his path, to catch up, but she was more steps ahead than he could understand. He fell forward, unable to stop himself at all.Jake tried to catch him, but the guy snarled and twisted further instead.She laughed at the ex- as he buried his front four teeth into the glittering plastic seat covering before both he and the chair tumbled to the floor. Metal clattered and rung hollow and he rolled onto his back, one hand on his mouth, maybe trying to keep his teeth there.“Come on, buddy,” Jake said as he pulled the guy up. He came up, stunned and insensible. He might figure it out by the next morning, but maybe not even then.The drunk mumbled something, slobbering hard between the syllables. Then he swung again, fist balled up tight.Jake caught it with one hand and it made a meaty slap of skin on skin. With the other, he was heaving and moving the guy off the floor.“Karla, cab.” Jake said, helping the guy lean against the bar. “Mr. Smooth can trust us with his car, right?”“So long as he keeps the drool off the bar,” she said with a smirk.“You can do that, right?” Jake asked, waiting for the guy to nod an answer. He did.“Now look, we all don’t take kindly to bullies here,” Jake said, evenly and smoothly. He wasn’t mad but he wasn’t going to let the guy off easy, either. “So don’t ever come back, or we’re going to let your date take a monkey wrench to your face. Not that she needs it,” he said, looking right at her. She’d calmed down, but was still ready to swing if she had to.The guy nodded, napkin held to his face showing a long and ragged strip of red where the teeth had been knocked loose. **“Hey, what’s your name?” he finally asked her.She turned her face up from where she’d been peering at the bar, the black bottle still resting there on its side. Not every day that three bills of liquor was spilled but not drunk. No less than five people had taken pictures of her with it, one of them with the still-bloody tumbler in her hand. “Why do you want to know?”“’Cause I want to make sure I get it right when I tell the story about how you shut that guy down.”“I shouldn’t have done that.” She pulled at one of the long locks that had fallen over her eyes. “He was just a garden variety asshole with a pedigree.”“And you run into a lot of guys like that?” Jake finished off the last of his bourbon, that pour having carried him the hour since the crowd carried the guy to the door, everyone in the bar having laid hands on him at least once.“It’s Madelyne,” she said after a pause, as if she’d come to some kind of private decision. “And yes, I’ve met more than my share of entitled children.” She pushed her own highball around, contemplating it as the light from the backglass fell through it.“That’s a good name. Maybe a little old-fashioned.”“Okay, then,” she said with the tug of a grin. “What’s yours? We’ll see who’s more old-fashioned than the other.”“I got a name, but everyone calls me Jake. Jake Culver.” He extended a hand.She regarded it cautiously. “Look, just ’cause I kept from getting the tar beaten out of him doesn’t mean I endorse what he did. But you looked pretty plain to be in charge of the situation.” Jake shrugged his shoulder then swept the room. “The crowd would have turned him into tomato paste and then there would’ve been cops. Nobody needs that.”Madelyne didn’t know whether to laugh or not. “And yet you didn’t flatten him, even when you had a chance to. He took a swing at you, you know.”“I was there.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t a swing. That was him feeling useless and shamed. Nothing to be won out of beating up a drunk like that.”“Except maybe the fun factor.”He shook his head again. “No fun, even when they’re begging for it. He walked in like he owned the place, and you,” he said, nodding at Madelyne and her green eyes. “And now he has to live with the fact that he doesn’t. That feeling’s gonna creep up on him when he’s alone.”“And just what is it that you do, Jake Culver, when you’re not saving raving assholes from themselves?”“Never saved anyone. I fix cars. I drive cars. Sometimes race them.”“Definitely more old-fashioned than me.” She smiled and didn’t shy away from it. “Racing cars? You ever win?”“Best I do is second place,” he said without shame. “I find that pretty hard to believe.”“Believe it,” Jason interjected from behind them. “He tries real hard, though.”“Guilty.” Jake raised up his hands.“Hey,” Jason said. “We’re going to do a recky on the Criver and do a quick couple of runs. You in?”“You’re gonna show us all how it’s done now that you’re stepping up to the big time? Oh, Madelyne, Jason. Jason, Madelyne.”“Enchanté.”Madelyne answered in a very long and very elaborate spate of French, smiling brightly.“Hey, look. I just do the opener. I don’t really…”She laughed at his abashment. “I think you’ve been shut down,” Jake said. “And no, I’m fine right here.“Just fine.”Jason and a few others looked at Jake and Madelyne on their way out and understood. Karla told her that she was welcome back anytime, something not a lot of strangers ever heard.

FULL BLEED: THE APOCALYPSE IS A HIDDEN TRUTH

In the past, I’ve used the perhaps prickly comparison of “cosmic horror is the literature of helplessness.” I think it, like Judge Dredd, is tough but fair. After all, what is more iconic in cosmic horror but the witnesses to it being simply overwhelmed, reduced to a place of not even subservience but utter meaninglessness in the face of the Horror From Another Place. You can’t win, you can’t break even and it’s the only game in town, which you like an idiot started playing by dint of the terrible crime of having been born or written into a piece of cosmic horror.But let’s explore another potential, more generous, axis. Let’s discuss cosmic horror as an apocalyptic construct. Now, I’m not talking the apocalypse as in the most boring possible construction of Imagine Dragons this is it the apocalypse which leads to the dystopia which fuels the imaginations of a generation of readers used to life in relative affluence and even privilege. That’s dull. The Apocalypse as destruction isn’t even a real thing, but perhaps in one aspect which I’ll get to, I promise. And I won’t go deep into eschatology, Christian or otherwise, though I suppose the roots of this view, or rather the rhizome-construct, ties into this way deep in my core. Yeah, I spent Sunday mornings watching Dr. Eugene Scott and flicking across various televised for your enlightenment and contributions Sunday School programming. No, it never really took, though it did prime me for revisiting them years and years after.The apocalypse here I’m talking about is the hidden truth of things. After all, isn’t this the basis of all the horror in Lovecraft? Humankind is revealed to have been a cosmic accident and not the heir to Kingship of the Universe. Yeah, the tentacle creatures hold that crown. We can’t even look at them because the sight of their quivering magnificence triggers suppressed genetic memories and we are reduced to gibberish uselessness. We fail our SAN rolls and lose all of it at once, only we’re still together enough to keep writing this letter that you’re now reading. I know. It’s fiction. I’m taking cheap shots because I can. That and the influence of the man is in the concepts that are now so deeply ingrained in contemporary fantasy and horror, they’re never coming out. I kid because it can never be erased no matter what I do (hint: read my story “Chunked.”) I tried.So, the basis of horror is revelation of a hidden truth, something so terrible we can’t look at it directly without surrendering everything we are. I know. You’re gonna say “Oh, Matt, there’s nothing like that in real life.” Oh sure there is. The Founding Fathers believed in absolute freedom yet owned slaves. There you go. Our history as Americans is not one of benevolence but of chains of slaughter so that we could have the land and resources that required in order to enrich comparative handfuls of people and fuel expansion. But that’s a truth very few people can look at and reconcile with the myths we tell ourselves about Exceptionality and Greatness. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be talking about fantasy and horror. Whoops.Luckily, I’m not the only person to look at things this way. Take, for example, Cormac McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN, which is a novel of cosmic horror disguised as a deconstruction of the myth of western expansion in America. Cowboys. What could be better? What could be a more American archetype? What could be more pure? Yeah. McCarthy turned the idea of the Cowboy as agent of civilization and reclamation into bloody uncle and insensate carnage, carnage unleashed against the Other, against Innocents and against themselves. It’s a harrowing read, and one of my favorite books, one that’s probably had too much influence upon me, honestly. Maybe I’ll outgrow it one day.And what good would cosmic horror be without its avatar of the uncanny in the strange and hairless Judge Holden, who sought to catalog all things known and to smash what which did not fit into his view. But is he actually the Uncanny or is he just Reason given form? The civilizing urge unleashed on an untamed landscape (and the men set out to tame it, ultimately.) Which truth is more shattering? Yes. They both are. We are both the monsters that killed and pillaged and stole and reduced the achievements of any culture in our way so that we could forge this magnificent civilization we now walk in. There's the shattering truth, the truth that must be hidden so that the myth of exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny and every other justification wielded to explain away the actions of the past, so that those myths can survive.If a thing can be destroyed by the truth, then let it be. Only that can't abide. So history is rewritten and suppressed and shrieked at NO! NO THAT WASN'T HOW IT HAPPENED AT ALL. Only it was. So yes, BLOOD MERIDIAN is cosmic horror played out on a different stage, a different set of pageants. Rather than the interior horrors, or the weird and ghastly of New England, or the glimpses into the otherworld, the terror comes from a blood-soaked landscape and that we all know whose blood it is and who spilled it. (Note and aside. This is not to say AND WE ARE THE MONSTERS because I still see that paraded around as if it is some great revelation, some absolutely new thought and unique and original, and my people, it simply isn't. Even if it's said interestingly, and it almost never is. Nor would McCarthy be so crude as to come out and say it. So let's put that whole line of thought aside.)The land itself is made strange and unknowable, alien and unloving, inhuman because it is primordial and staggeringly vast. It will never be fully tamed, just as the humans on it will never be fully tamed because they've managed to fool themselves as to the nature of reason and civilization and will continue to do so because to look at it will destroy what they cherish. Just as Lovecraft's protagonists are utterly shattered by the truth that it isn't white and educated and wealthy men at the center of the universe, with their cherished ideals and words. No it's not them at all. Instead it is something other, not even human.Cosmic horror is exposure to the hidden truth and the revelation that comes swells and pushes out any other rational thought, filling instead with the wisdom of the gulfs between stars and other worlds. Often, it's tied to the nihilist/defeatist "we are nothing compared to this [points to everything]." I don't truck with that. But then I don't really write cosmic horror. Oh sure, I'll straight-up steal from it, no problemo. See, in fiction, the shattering truth can be allowed to destroy the viewer. End of book, last page turns, movie fades to black etc etc. We are not so lucky in life. We not only must continue from that shattering truth, we must take it within ourselves and grow and fight and try to bend events into some kind of better order. Or just keep lying and hug that myth.More later, but I'll be honest in saying that there's been what appears to be pretty unwelcome, though unsurprising news. Oh look, a truth that shatters. Yeah. So I need to assimilate this and move on.