Josef Matulich's Blog, page 14

A special offer from Post Mortem Press

I don’t usually shout “Buy my book!” but my publisher has set up a special offer to introduce you to my “Arcanum Faire” series. You can get both “Camp Arcanum” and “Power Tools in the Sacred Grove” for only $4.99. Click on over and check it out. Enjoy, and watch out for reanimated roadkill on the information superhighway.

https://ganxy.com/i/102547/josef-matulich/the-arcanum-faire-series

All Souls Night

For the past month, we have been overwhelmed with the business of costumes and make-up and scary movies. It’s easy to forget that this isn’t just Halloween, but Samhain, the night when the walls are low between worlds. Take a moment to think of ancestors and dearly departed tonight as they might be right at your sides.

Power Tools in the Sacred Grove

As Marc pulled into Camp Arcanum, Mr. Fixit’s headlights caught something sparkling in the dark. He vaguely remembered that Eleazar and Michael had erected an artificial Christmas tree beside the picnic table. Orange extension cords coiled around it as garland. Chrome-plated box-end wrenches dangled from the branches as ornaments and reflected light like mirrors. A mechanic’s trouble light took the place of a star on the top.

He growled under his breath at the waste of time and tools. At the last moment, he decided to park beside it instead of on top of it.

Marc slumped out of his car and into his trailer. He didn’t bother with the lights inside. Stripping his clothes off as he went, he fell into bed. He knocked over the pictures of women he didn’t know and burrowed under the covers, hoping he didn’t dream about Brenwyn, Jeremiah, or any of the other denizens of Arcanum.

#

Eleazar made the circuitous run of the last few hundred yards into camp driving with only his left hand on the wheel. His other hand spent most of its happy time between the thighs of Esmeralda, an exotic beauty he had met that evening in Arcanum. That he was able to negotiate the turns, the clutch, the gear shift, and a curvaceous Brazilian was a tribute to his superb physical coordination.

He pulled his gypsy wagon into its habitual space and his paramour for the evening was upon him before the engine had even died. He found her enthusiasm to be encouraging. He did everything he could to encourage her in turn.

The two of them made it out of the truck without injury and commenced across the gravel drive, the stairs and trailer door while linked lip-to-lip. Once inside, Esmeralda’s outer clothes came off as if buttered. Eleazar was doing his best to catch up when he was distracted by the sound of bedsprings. His blood froze as he saw the naked form of his boss, the surly giant that beat monsters to death with a shovel, rising out of shadows.

“What the Hell are you doing in my trailer?” Marc rumbled.

#

To discover how bad things can go from here, catch my reading from my second novel “Power Tools in the Sacred Grove” this Sunday at the Book Loft: 631 S 3rd St, Columbus, OH 43206, (614) 464-1774.  Barring bad weather, I will be in the garden between 1 and 3 p.m., reading, signing, and perhaps hand out bribes of sweets.

Housekeeping

There are some less-than-pleasant things one needs to do, even when all you really want is to lie on the couch to watch Firefly and massage your sinuses.

One part of that is the harrowing of the basement. It has been filled with fabric, costume pieces, and vintage garb for quite some. Those items sitting down there does us no good, so now we have a half-dozen bins strewn around the living room. Eventually they will be sorted, sewn, cleaned, and sold.

I also discovered that the other pages of this blog don’t include my author specific email address, nor any official link to my second novel. That too, has been corrected.

I live such an exciting life.

Scary Man in Black Failure

The storm winds blew rough and ice-cold rains slanted across what should have been a festive celebration of arts and wine. The tents flapped in the breeze as the artisans hunkered down for the duration. The Man in Black strode through the mess like Death itself. The rain rolled off the leather on his back and shoulders even as it soaked into the wool felt of his hat.

He stopped when he saw the fledgling bird. Soaked to the skin, it laid on his back, claws to Jesus. The Man in Black scooped it up in his hands, felt how close to ice it was. He looked down upon it and murmured:

“Awww, the poor little thing.”

Okay, when it comes to looking scary, I can pull off the dour Man in Black thing, but when it comes to baby birds I am a cream puff. The Grove City Arts & Wine Festival was an ignominious wash-out, cold and wet and unpleasant. I found a fledgling sparrow at the base of a tree behind one of the tents. It was pretty much a sopping mass of down and naked feet.

I took the little darling back to bookseller’s tent where I was huckstering with a handful of other Central Ohio writers. As we waited for the weather to break, I built the bird a nest of paper napkins and secured it behind the display racks.

Eventually, the little twit warmed up enough to get rambunctious. Then, he jumped out of his nest, off the table and into the stream of ice-cold water that flowed through the gutter. I re-captured the bird, dried it off and set it to nest again. We went through the same cycle of warm, rinse, repeat a few times before I ultimately folded my tents and slipped away. I went to bed by six that evening, a shivering mess. I built the bird a nest in a super-size drink cup lined with toilet paper.

The next morning, my wife and I delivered the fledgling to the local wildlife rescue. The bird recovered but my reputation as the scary Man in Black never did.

Out Standing in my Field (summer author events)

I must apologize to those who have been following me in my blog. Things have been exciting in my real life, which produce some interesting topics for blog posts, and I have not been able to write more than my minimum required efforts on my third Arcanum Faire novel. I will try to do better in the future.

I am going to be out in the field, meeting and greeting my fans the next few weeks. After the pre-requisite self-promotion, we’ll get back to documenting the true weirdness of the world.

This Saturday, July 11th, I will be with the Post Mortem Press folks selling & signing Camp Arcanum and Power Tools in the Sacred Grove. Expect to see me there between 11 am and 5 pm as long as the rain hasn’t gone completely horizontal nor the winds haven’t blown away the manhole covers. Check this link for event details:

http://discovercanalfulton.com/events/canal_days/

Saturday, August 1st, I will be at The Alley Vintage & Costume in our Arts & Letters celebration. C. Bryan Brown, Tim McWhorter, Leslie Anderson, Matt Betts, and myself will reading, signing, meeting and greeting from noon to 5 pm. Artist Seth Lyon will lo be feued. If you’re curious, you may check out the link below. If you’re not curious, I’ll try harder:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1675994625962671/

Thursday August 6th, I will be hosted by the biggest and best bookstore in Central Ohio, the Book Loft. I will be in the garden, barring monsoon conditions, from 6 pm to 8 pm where I will be signing, reading and perhaps breaking out my juggling balls. The required Facebook event lurks just below:

https://www.facebook.com/events/995820937115430/

I may wedge more events from PMP’s Press the Flesh tour into the next few months. You all will be the second to know.

Last Day Painting Sale

In the local mall I frequent there is a former arcade next to the food court. Today I found it was a temporary gallery, filled with cheap prints and the kind of paintings turned out by the assembly line starving artists. A big, badly painted sign proclaimed “Last Day. Going out of Business.”

The couple who ran the operation were a wiry and tired, authentic starving artists. The man showed off his wares with pride, even when they were mediocre landscapes and human subjects of only passable anatomy. There was one wall of his own work. It was a combination of primitive and impressionistic that would have earned me a beating in art school.

I smiled, and nodded, and made polite noises as he told me how he even took commissions. I wished him luck in his move to the state fair and went about my lunchtime perambulations.

The hip thing to do would be to scoff at the wannabee artist and his oblivious attempts at success. Since he looked to be my age, I would have guessed that he had been at it for three decades with no more to show for it than a month’s stint in a shopping mall at his own expenses. But in spite of the obstacles, he keeps on with no promise of success.

Come over to this wall where I have all my own stuff. I do commissions, too.

Authorial Bilocation

As a typical denizen of the twenty-first century, I am often expected to be two or more places at the same time. Today is one of those days.

I get my first chance to appear as an author at the Westerville Public Library’s Local Author Event, along with forty-nine other local writers. I will be there with “Camp Arcanum” and “Power Tools in the Sacred Grove”, my latest installment in the on-going comedy of sex, magick, and power tools. I have packed up my books and postcards and bookmarks and other assorted author table trappings. I am doing some serious debate in my head weather I should bring my were-baby as a conversation starter or my travel-sized shovel on a guitar stand.

The were-baby is the cutest, most disturbing thing I’ve seen in a coon’s age, but the shovel may prove useful if anyone comes up upon my table intent on making mayhem with a volume of the OED.

Decisions, decisions.

Today is also the Printer’s Row Lit Fest in Chicago. My publisher Post Mortem Press will have a table there, staffed by the Beebe’s, Cina Pelayo, Chris Larsen and Mike Matula. Kit and I attended last year, selling quite well, but it involved a three state trek that thanks to our GPS personally introduced us to every sheep, cow and windmill for five hundred miles. For those in the Illinois area, feel free to stop in, say “hi” to my literary compatriots, and buy my books.

I will be there in spirit as I sit in an Ohio library armed with either a spade or a hairball.

No Wicked Vintage Parties

It all started with our son and the cat. Convinced that Kestrel had a secret life of catnip and carousing, my son would admonish the cat when we left the house with: “You’re in charge, Kestrel, but no wicked cat parties.”

The we opened The Alley, a vintage clothing store. At the end of each day, my wife would shut off the lights, set the alarm, and rush for the door. As she locked the doors, she would call out to the dark room filled with dresses, hats, and furs: “Good night, Alley. You did great today. No wicked vintage parties.” Usually nothing happens overnight, except for that one morning she came in to find the front window mannequins wearing just dickies.

One night this week, we got a call from the alarm company. After a mad dash to the store, we found nothing amiss. All the windows were intact, the doors were all locked. There was nothing dislodged from the walls or moving in the air currents to set off the motion sensors. It was a complete false alarm, and a mystery.

Our son began checking through the security camera footage. Our system, which is not connected to the alarms, had night vision cameras that are motion activated after hours. He found that DOZENS of times in the last few months, the cameras kicked on to record for a few minutes in the middle of the night. Nothing is visibly moving, nothing is out of place as if it had fallen and set off the motion sensors. Lots of nothing, over and over again.

Now, it could be air currents from the HVAC doing something funky in the IR range we’re just not seeing. Maybe, its movements of our rambunctious neighbors from the nail salon or the massage parlor on either side of us. The nail techs have knocked things off our walls during business hours.

Or perhaps, with our store filled to the gunwales with clothing and accessories of the deceased, there’s some residual spiritual energy attached to them that needs to bust out every now and then. Think “Heart-shaped Box.”

Whatever the rational or irrational explanation, as we looked over the multiple incidents I told my wife: “Gee honey, I think we’ve got the documentation of those Wicked Vintage Parties you’re always talking about.”

I Win the Commute…

AS anyone who’s read my blog knows, many of my greatest real-life misadventures happen behind the wheel of a car. I have spent the last eighteen years taking, processing, or consulting on insurance claims. Any time I make it out of a mall parking unscathed I give thanks to whatever gods hold sway. But still, this week I had my weirdest morning commute yet.

I was zipping along my city’s outer loop on my way to work when traffic slowed suddenly to accommodate construction a few hundred yards ahead. I was in the passing lane when I decelerated from sixty-five miles an hour to roughly ten. A little white car in the center lane did the same.

Unfortunately, it nosed down, almost scraping the pavement with its front bumper. Then, its driver’s side front wheel snapped clean off. The errant wheel rolled on at speed, crossing in front of me without contact. It then passed the car in front of me on the left side and continue into the distance along the shoulder.

The white car was not so lucky. It continued in its original Newtonian path, throwing up sparks as it went. I switched on my hazards and pulled back to give the driver a clear path to the shoulder. Looking like a Fourth of July sparkler, the white car crossed in front of me as its wheel had done to come to a safe stop ahead of me and to the left.

I snuck a glance at the driver as I passed. A heavy, harried-looking man of late middle age, I could tell he was thinking three things as he bowed his head over the steering wheel.

“I don’t believe that this just happened.”

“I don’t believe I survived what just happened.”

“I’m really glad I wore dark pants.”

Though another co-worker passed a three car chain reaction accident at roughly the same spot later that day, it was generally accepted at the office that I had won the morning commute.