A.R. Braun's Blog, page 5

Paranormal: Ghosts and Demons

For the longest time, I only liked foreign horror films, as few movies made in the United States impressed me. I considered the golden age of horror the late ’60s through the early ’80s (and I still do). But lately, I’ve been taken with films about ghosts or demons, in the context of something like Paranormal Activity and the sequels–which are about possessed devil worshipers–but mostly ghosts.

 

Not too long ago, I watched a film called The Innkeepers that scared the crap out of me. It’s probably because, in the building where I live, a lot of old persons die, and that movie in particular got me thinking about being haunted. It was delightful: I had lain awake for two hours, afraid I’d be spooked by my dearly-departed neighbors, and I hadn’t had a reaction like that to a horror film since The Ring, where I had lain awake half the night thinking that little ghost girl was going to come out of my TV (another foreign film, but an Americanized version).

 

The reason I’m talking about movies is that very few books about ghosts work; it’s too hard to do, for the most part. The only effective ones I can think if are The Haunting of Hill House, which is my second favorite novel, and The Shining, which is definitely in my top ten list of my favorite books of all time. I keep reading ghost novels, rooting for them to be great, but they rarely are. It’s a shame, for ghosts and demons are the only horror monsters that are real. That’s why I find them so freaky, I think.

 

Some of my favorite movies in this vein are Lake Mungo, both of the Grave Encounters films, The Haunting of Helena, Paranormal Entity, Mama, The Conjuring, Sinister, Dream House and, if you like old movies, 1977′s The Sentinel, 1982′s One Dark Night, and 1986′s Killer Party. If there are any of these you haven’t seen, I highly recommend them. It’s hard to go wrong with a ghost story.

 

Please don’t confuse what I’m talking about with paranormal romance, which I hate with a vengeance. Vampires aren’t boyfriends, they’re monsters, and they don’t fucking sparkle.

 

I could talk about all the times I’ve been haunted in real life, either by ghosts or demons, for when I first moved into the building I’m at now, I was a Satanist, and I got my ass haunted off. In fact, it was the inspiration for a short story of mine called “Nil Caveat.” But that’s another post.

 

Happy haunts.

To Eat or Not to Eat . . . and Drink

This weekend, I decided to blog about how I’ve been dieting instead of the horror novel I’m reading because I haven’t decided if the book is great, and I don’t want to blog about it if it isn’t. What the hell. Any subject but curling, right? While I know dieting has nothing to do with horror, it’s been a horror to me, especially this past week when I made a couple of gruesome discoveries.

 

Lately, I’ve been getting a bit, um . . . well, chunky. Not that I’m insulting plus-sized persons, but it is a fact that it’s unhealthy to be obese, especially if one is in mid-life as I am, although I don’t do “old” very well. I’m just not feeling it.

 

Anyway, let’s not get off the subject.

 

I’ve had a paunch gut ever since I turned twenty-eight. You see, at that moment, I backslid on Christianity and quit fasting. That was all it took.

 

Fasting, there’s another horror. . . .

 

In the past year or so, however, I’ve started to get jowls and a double chin, and the gut became a behemoth. I’ve got concert shirts and jeans I can’t fit into anymore. Therefore, the tribulation-filled days of dieting began. I didn’t think I could do it, but you’d be surprised how the fat face can motivate. I used to work with a young woman that lost all her extra weight by giving up soda, so I thought, Aha! That’s the culprit, and I resolved to give up the tangy treat, as well as all foods high in fat and all sugar. I began to take my coffee black–the horror of horrors, but I still do it–and decided to drink water most of the time, as well as diet sodas.

 

Is that alarm going off in your head? It gets worse.

 

Yes, downtown I stood, waiting for the bus, making small talk with a couple of young men, when the subject of soda came up. This stranger had the nerve to tell me that diet soda was worse for me than real soda, can you believe it? I’m sure you can, because he’s right. I Googled it, and it is. I then went a step further and researched whether Mio is worse for me than regular soda, and agony of agonies, it is! Come on, God, give me a break! It’s the sucralose or the saccharin, but either way, you’re screwed.

 

Then I found a Web page that said La Croix flavored sparkling water was a healthy choice. So, of course, none of the grocery stores in my area have it. More horror. Then, a miracle: Arizona tea didn’t have artificial flavoring or preservatives, so I bought some of that, not stopping to think it might have sugar, and I was back at square one. That left flavored bottled water, and I’ve tried that before and didn’t like it. But I’m going to try it again, I guess, for I’m more disciplined now than I was years ago. At this moment, I’m broke, however.

 

There is a happy ending to this non-fic tale, though. The reason diet soda and Mio make one gain weight is because, when one finally has sweets–like candy–or fruit, the saccharin or sucralose works against them, and you gain weight. Lucky for me I never eat candy or sugar. I do have an apple with lunch and an orange with supper, but not often. Plus, I drink mostly bottled water. I only drink diet soda when I wake up to get rid of the dry-rot taste (black coffee isn’t cutting it most mornings) and after I practice the death metal (I have an anonymous studio project), as it’s hard on my throat, and water doesn’t soothe it. I’ll gag and throw up. Therefore, I’m losing weight, and my belly is no longer the behemoth it was.

 

Woot!

Pet Peeves

This week, mostly all the snow, has rubbed me the wrong way. I thought Id’ blog about some of the things that are bugging me, and seeing as the weather’s going to improve next week, I’ll leave out the snow that seems like it’ll never stops coming.

 

One of the main thing is The Olympics. Nine out of ten times when I’m channel surfing–and there’s never anything on but The Walking Dead and Banshee–you guessed it, it’s curling.  I mean, really? Seriously? Fucking curling? I can’t even make it through a White Sox game without being bored to death, and you want me to watch that?  For the most part, I think sports are boring–except football; it’d be weak not to be into that, but that’s fast-paced. And it has cheerleaders.

 

FYI, I wear that ChiSox cap because it looks cool. A lot of my hostility is coming from all the dick-measuring that fans of other teams feel compelled to do. “My team’s better than your team,” and that kind of puerile shit. Well, my team’s not on steroids like yours, and it’ll come out, but that’s beside the point. Most sports are just freakin’ boring. And then I’m supposed to watch that crap. Okay, hold the curling stone, then release it with almost no physical effort. Snore.

 

And I’ve been noticing a lot of guys with little Paris Hilton dogs lately. It’s bad enough that so many guys love cats. Really? Can you get a manly pet like a big dog? It just bugs me. Why do so many men have little dogs around here? It’s different if it belongs to the wife or the kids, but it doesn’t. These are guys that live alone, and they’re straight. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t say anything bad about them, because that’s just ignorant, but I know them, and they’re are, so ????? I’m always tempted to punt those ankle-biters, because they hate my guts and bark their heads off at me, but just tempted. Yes, I know that’s wrong.

 

Okay, done venting.

Lack of Integrity

I’ve seen a lot of low-rent, bottom-feeding actions in the writing community lately, and I feel I have to speak out. Not that I’m the be-all-and-end-all of author morals, but I’m getting tired of the lack of integrity. It’s an absence of common sense, and it’s puerile.

 

Revenge critiques, spouting off in online forums–the big-boy equivalent of “Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah”–verbal attacks against self-published writers because an editor of a small press is threatened, successful authors going on ego trips, writers believing the horror hype, and what purpose does any of it serve except to show the writing community how unprofessional you are and show the world how low you can really go?

 

Let’s face it, most of us won’t make it financially where writing is concerned and will have to keep the ol’ day job–only the lucky few will–and therefore, isn’t more important to be a person of integrity than of what they are: fiends and ghouls with no purpose in life?  I mean, we’re all grown ups here, right? At least I hope so.

 

Sorry for the rant, but it’s on my heart, and that’s what I’ve got to say this week. And if I’ve ever gotten even, it’s because I’m not perfect. I try to ignore it, I really do. That’s another thing that needs to change, people expecting writers to be perfect like some weird sect of fake Christianity. You know what? We’re not perfect.

 

But at least I’m not starting trouble.

Critique Group Form

I’m constantly having to search out new critique groups because, let’s face it, writers are the laziest, most opinionated people on the planet. Not that I’m the be-all-and-end-all of writing etiquette, but I believe an author should be professional. Anyway, I shouldn’t have to do this, but here goes:

 

1. Whatever you have to say, be constructive. A writer’s not going to listen to your criticism if you’re being nasty, and he’s not going to reciprocate by giving you a critique. This isn’t a rap battle where the goal is to insult the other’s mother.

 

2. Pay back the person who critiqued your piece. It’s always great to know that people I’ve tried to help took my crit and ran. Thanks a lot.

 

3. Critique in your genre. What does a fantasy writer have to tell a horror author? And so on.

 

4. Don’t bitch about the critiques you receive. They weren’t personal attacks. All right, in some cases, maybe they were, but it’s puerile to write a get-even critique.

 

5. Come to work. I’m always amazed by how I only get one critique on a story or novel chapter in most crit groups, and at the most, I get two. Then they wonder why I quit. I need at least six crits to judge whether your criticism is the majority opinion.

 

If writers acted responsible and did 1-5, I wouldn’t always be searching for a new critique group. But they don’t.

 

Feel free to ignore 1-5 if you want me to to quit your crit group.

Jere Cunningham: Master of Description

The first I heard of Jere Cunningham was in the early 1980s, when I found out about a novel called The Abyss, which had a Stephen King recommendation. While the novel looked tempting, strangely, I never read it until decades later when I got serious about my writing. I loved the book so much I bought the other three horror novels he’d written that are advertised on Amazon.com. I found them to be some of the best books I’d ever read in my life, but I couldn’t locate any information about him on the Internet, except for some brief mentions of his screenwriting successes. A great author, a greater mystery.

 

Some will describe The Abyss as a book about people mining too deeply and digging into Hell, but when I finally read it, the story had more to it than that, in my opinion. But before his most publicized horror novel, he’d written a couple of Fawcett gold-medal books in the ’70s called Hunter’s Blood and The Legacy. I don’t want to give too much away, but in the former, a group of men go hunting, but things go terribly awry. This struck me as not only brilliant, but also original, as I’d never read a tale like that. In The Legacy,  a creepy old house and a dark evil causes problems for a family, threatening the dynamic and also their lives.

 

Just before The Abyss, he released a book called The Visitor. While this is the weakest of the four, that is by no means a criticism. You have to stay with this one, as the first half may have you wondering where he’s going with the story. But the second half explodes as he unleashed a threat so fierce, a family can barely defend themselves against it. The tale is insidious as usual; he again wows with the best descriptive prowess I’ve ever seen. There’s another book by him advertised on Amazon that’s a dark fantasy, but that’s not my genre of interest. Though I haven’t read it, it’s probably better than most horror novels, and I may break down and buy it in the future, just so I can read another book by the master.

 

Check out his work. You won’t be disappointed.

Major Surgery On a Novel

I’m revising and editing a novel that I’ll release either next year or the year after that, Lord willing. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get an agent next year, and if that happens, it may take two years after that for my first book, which is actually my sixth, to come out. Therefore, I thought I’d share my thoughts on editing a novel fully by exercising your mental muscle vs. lazily just revising per critiques, then sending it out to the world. Nobody said writing, revising, and editing a book would be easy.

 

Pretty much every novel I’ve written on has needed major surgery. Unfortunately, it’s not only hard, but sometimes impossible to kill all your darlings. But, let’s face it, to compete–or at least know you’ve given it your all if it doesn’t compete–you need a brilliant first line; the beginning can’t be what makes agents groan: the “It was all a dream” beginning or driving around in a car; the beginning must hook the reader and let the reader know what genre the book is; everything that doesn’t have anything to do with the story, that’s just in there because you think it’s cute, must be cut; every fact must be correct (unless you’re taking author liberties, which should be explained in an author’s note); and one must push oneself to have excellent description over something like “He got out of the car and walked over to her.” It’s what separates a good writer from a great writer.

 

I call all this major surgery.

 

One would think a writer’s first novel would be the only one that would need major surgery, but you should have a bunch of novels that you placed on the shelf because they’re newbie crap. It takes time for an author to hone his or her craft enough to write something really good . . . or, hopefully, great. My suggestion is to make a new file for your novel that you use to do the major surgery. That way, you know you can keep what you edited out if you don’t like the radical revision. It won’t be long before you realize the version with major surgery’s the best.

 

Happy (excruciating) cutting.

My Top 200 Horror Films of All Time

I refuse to admit we’re in the holiday season. Oddly, I’ve still got that Halloween spirit. Therefore, in honor of that, here’s a copy of the top 200 films ever, in my opinion. Some are TV episodes, and there may be some other genres, but they sincerely creeped me out, so there they be. Since I’m always seeing more films, I’m working on a top 250 list. The first forty are in order.

 

The Shining (original version)
The Ring
Evil Dead II
The Evil Dead (original version)
The Spell
The Lost
Inside
Carrie (first version)
Ginger Snaps
Megan Is Missing
Triangle
Day of the Dead
Night of the Living Dead (first version)
The Last House On the Left (original version)
The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum version)
Omen III: Final Conflict
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Phantasm
The Exorcist III
The Exorcist
An American Werewolf In London
The Howling
One Dark Night
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
Pet Sematary
Let the Right One In (Swedish version, not Let Me In)
Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola’s version)
The Wicker Man (first version)
Lake Mungo
‘Salem’s Lot
Alien
The Devil’s Advocate
The Last Horror Movie
Dawn of the Dead (either version)
Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane
Diary of the Dead
Tales From the Hood
The Omen (either version)
From Dusk Till Dawn
I Spit On Your Grave (original version)
Without Warning
Mother’s Day (original version)
Damien: Omen II
Killer Party
Van Helsing
Evilspeak
Halloween (both versions)
The Lost Boys
Friday the 13th (first version)
Amber Alert
The Funhouse
2,001 Maniacs
Jeepers Creepers
Jeepers Creepers II
Wrong Turn
Wrong Turn 2: Dead End
Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead
Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings
House At the End of the Street
The Amityville Horror (both versions)
Amityville II: The Possession
Scream
Grave Encounters
Grave Encounters 2
It
Cujo
Firestarter
House of 1000 Corpses
The Dead Zone
Desperation
Storm of the Century
Mary Reilly
The Dark Half
The Mist
The Servants of Twilight
Phantoms
The Descent
The Descent: Part 2
Dark House
Slither
The Rapture
Sliver
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death
Rosemary’s Baby
A Nightmare on Elm Street (both versions)
Fright Night (both versions)
The Thing (John Carpenter’s remake)
Dracula 2000
They Live
Re-animator
Dagon
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Necronomicon: Book of the Dead
Hell Asylum
Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye
Carrie 2000
Dawn of the Dead (remake)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (first version)
Texas Chainsaw 3D
The Blob (first version)
Frailty
Orphan
Exorcism of Gail Bowers
Dead Alive
Blood Diner
Children of the Damned
Children of the Corn
Graveyard Shift
The Stand
Needful Things
The Sentinel
The Last Exorcism
Independence Day
Aliens
Alien 3
Alien: Resurrection
Species
The Demonic Toys
Puppet Master
Piranha (both versions)
Hostel
Hostel: Part II
Hostel: Part III
The Devil’s Rejects
Satan’s Blood
Don’t Deliver Us from Evil
The Lair of the White Worm
Witchboard
Witchboard 2: The Devil’s Doorway
Urban Legends: Bloody Mary
Final Destination
Warlock
The Woman
The Dentist
The Dentist 2
Ice Cream Man
Dog Soldiers
Underworld
Underworld: Evolution
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Blade
Blade II
Blade: Trinity
Wolf
Queen of the Damned
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (first remake)
When a Stranger Calls (original version)
Natural Born Killers
Freaks
Nosferatu
New Nightmare
Saw
Lake Placid
Anaconda
Beyond Loch Ness
Carny
Strangeland
Wishmaster
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies
The Haunting of Julia
Darkness Falls
The Woman in Black
Primal
The Wicker Tree
Ghost Ship
House on Haunted Hill (original version)
Dream House
Thir13en Ghosts
Mausoleum
Alice, Sweet Alice
Insidious
Drag Me to Hell
The Possession
Stephen King’s Silver Bullet
CrowsNest
Poltergeist
Poltergeist II: The Other Side
Nightwing
They Crawl
Arachnophobia
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time
Teeth
Home Movie
Trilogy of Terror
The Lurking Fear
The Keep
Demon Seed
The Unborn (either version)
Skin and Bones (Fear Itself)
Dreams in the Witch House (Masters of Horror)
Jennifer (Masters of Horror)
Deer Woman (Masters of Horror)
Pro-Life (Masters of Horror)
Pelts (Masters of Horror)
The Black Cat (Masters of Horror)
Valerie on the Stairs (Masters of Horror)
Apt Pupil
The Grudge
Blessed
Audition

 

 

Author Cliches

In the past, certain people have looked down on me for my faith. Well, I don’t like to talk about it because this is my horror career, not church, but aren’t we as writers supposed to avoid cliches? And does that apply to our real lives, I wonder?

 

If not, I wish that would change. Believe it or not, I prefer Christmas to Halloween, and I was late in putting up my decorations for the latter. And I don’t eat Tombstone Pizza just because I’m a death-metal musician and horror author. I prefer Jack’s (Canadian bacon’s my favorite). And I did try to sing; I’ve done rock demos and a death demo with clean vocals as well as growls; I’m pretty much tone deaf, and things didn’t improve after voice lessons. I used to be into rock and heavy-metal and didn’t go death till 1992. And, like it or no, I’m not a Devil-worshiper or an atheist. Plus, I’m clean cut. I mean, I’m not in Cannibal Corpse! Moreover, some days I wear a polo shirt because it would be boring to wear a concert shirt or a horror shirt every day.

 

Predictable, you’re not getting that here!

Golden Age of Horror: Gone

With Halloween approaching, I think about the lost tradition of watching horror movies all night once you’re down with whatever Halloween activity you’ve got planned, whether it’s helping your kids trick or treat or participating in a Halloween party, perhaps even a costume contest. As far as I was (and am) concerned, I’m happy making people leave me the hell alone (not you A. R. Braun fans, of course, if there are any).

 

I say the tradition is lost because cable only plays a horror film if you’ve seen it ten times already. The movie channels aren’t much better. And the original horror films MTV comes up with? Meh. Might as well be a Disney Channel originals.

 

And they’re getting ready to bore me with them again, all the horror greats I’ve already seen, plus the non-greats: all the endless Freddie, Jason, and Michael sequels, mindless and boring as they are. Friday the 13th Part VII: the New Blood. Yuck.

 

In my day, around 1981, HBO played great horror films you’d never seen all Halloween night. You could really make an evening of it: The Funhouse, Without Warning, Evilspeak, The Shining (when it was new), Mother’s Day (not the stupid remake that totally wrecked the film), and more. Scary movies should get a reaction out of you, make it hard to sleep at night, which so few films today do, although there are exceptions (Triangle, Inside, Dark House and the like).

 

Wow, the golden age of horror really is gone.

 

Way-past-overdone duechy vampires and zombies 1, horror 0.

 

Happy frickin’ Halloween.