Stephen Mark Rainey's Blog, page 32

The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade: Huzzah!

It took three weekends of chainsawing, hauling wood, stacking wood, and massaging sore muscles with various libations, but... at last!... I have conquered those big fallen trees in the yard at Pleasant Hill. Huzzah!   The BIG one was an ash tree, which has gotta be the hardest, heaviest wood I have ever laid hands on. Mother of Yog, a 3-foot log from this beast weighed 50 or more pounds, and when all was said and done, I calculate that tree weighed well over a ton. Which means the woodpile I made weighs that much and more, since the smaller tree that fell—a rotting poplar—is also part of the package. Now my arms are stretched out and long like a gorilla's.   Kinda hoping no more trees fall here. Just last week, a little ways up the road, a big tree fell on a small house and totally destroyed it. Fortunately, no one was home, else they'd have been flattened. Thus endeth the inaugural battle of the One-Man Chainsaw Brigade. ( Part 1 may be found here ; Part 2, here .)
Just starting out
A spot of progress
Last week's whittling away

L) How it began: fell over; R) How it ended: a wee bit of battle damage

Really Gorgeous, Really Well-Done, Really Good Stuff...

I don't usually share individual reviews from Amazon.com, but this one of Fugue Devil: Resurgence makes my day and re-ignites my creative energy. Thank you, Christine's Horror Fiction Reviews!

"Stephen Mark Rainey has a solid reputation in cosmic horror circles for very good reason, and this collection shows exactly why it’s so well-deserved. These stories, many of them interconnected in their own shared universe, hit just the right balance of melding our understandable everyday reality with the greater otherworldly eldritch, done with an approachable, readable style that brings them close to home..." Read more here: Christine’s Horror Fiction Reviews

Fugue Devil Resurgence at Amazon.com

Return of the Living Dead Bedtime Story

It's one of those days when the compulsion to go hiking grabbed me before I even got out of bed. In the absence of any new nearby trail geocaches, there was nothing for it but to go maintain a cache or two of my own... and undertake some good, old-fashioned wandering about. I got going pretty early, my sights set on one of my oldest cache hides — " Threading the Needle " ( GC1EQD2 ) — about 1.5 miles out on the Reedy Fork Trail along Lake Townsend. The cache itself, which I placed in July 2008, turned out to be in excellent condition, considering its age. I also decided to wander about the woods, thinking I might be able to rediscover the container from the very first night cache I ever hunted.

That cache was called " Bedtime Story " ( GC112D8 ). A few friendly reprobates and I hunted it in April 2008, and what an entertaining experience that turned out to be! (If you're feeling masochistic, an account of this adventure may be found here.)
Nowadays, I keep detailed notes of all my cache finds, including the coordinates to the final stages of multi and puzzle caches, but in those early days of geocaching, such a helpful notion had not occurred to me, and it wasn't until 2012 that geocaching.com added the capability to store such information on the cache pages. So, I have only dim memory to draw on as far as the location of the final container, which was an ammo can hidden under a prodigious deadfall not far from the lake bank.
Today, since I was a long way out on the trail where "Bedtime Story" is hidden, I took it upon myself to go looking for it. Now, without having access to its coordinates, I knew it'd be something of a crapshoot. And I really don't even know if the cache is hidden where it used to be; the cache owner, Ranger Fox, has changed things up with it over the years. Still, I decided to follow a few hunches and see whether I might find myself somewhere that might look familiar enough to lead me to the hide.
The long and short of it is that I did not. However, I had a great time finding many of the old reflector tacks that led you to the different stages of the cache. Some of those are still usable for the cache's current incarnation, some are probably not. On one of my side trips off the trail, I happened upon a big-ass barrel near the lakefront, which aroused my curiosity, but I did not attempt to pry it open because you never know when a big-ass barrel in the woods might contain a flesh-eating zombie. I mean, it has happened. Remember Return of the Living Dead! Like hell I'm gonna go down that road!
Anyway, I fit in a good 3.5 miles of hiking, much of it in fairly rugged terrain. So now I has a tired. Got real writing to do, so off I go! Tis mighty swampy out yonder Odd little lean-to I happened upon; probably someone's makeshift duck blind

Wicked Sick: Maladies to Anticipate

A while back, I wrote the introduction to a new anthology featuring work by members of the New England Horror Writers group, and it's now been officially announced. It's something to look forward to — and I'm especially honored to have written the intro since I'm a Southerner, and those other folks are not.
From Editor Kristi Petersen Schoonover:
"I'm over the moon to announce the cover and Table of Contents for the anthology I've been editing with Scott Goudsward, Wicked Sick ! How awesome is this cover art by Mikio Murakami?
"If any of you is a fan, this collection will definitely be up your alley, but there's something for every taste — a little terrifying, a little noir, a little lit, a little poetry, a little Poe-esque, a little Lovecraftian... all dark and intense. And Stephen Mark Rainey, an amazing writer whose story "Night Crier" appeared in 34 Orchard's inaugural issue, wrote us a stunning foreword.
"You won't want to miss this. I'll keep you posted!"
TABLE OF CONTENTS: "They Come at Night – Greg Bastianelli"The Cancer Ward at Midnight" – L.L. Soares"Will’s Theory of Free-Floating Fat" – Peter N. Dudar"Worry Wart" – Kurt Newton"Toad in the Hole" – Gevera Bert Piedmont"Moonsickness" – Jenna Moquin"7 Irish Wake" – Mike Deady"Happy Valley" – Harold Odentz "Exorcising Attention Deficit Hyperactive Demons Requires an Order of Operations" – Trisha J. Wooldridge"Author’s Note" – Rob Smales"Body Work" – Nancy Brewka-Clark"House of Tupper" – Meg Smith"Eternal Prison" – Timothy P. Flynn"Ghost Trains" – Tom Deady"The Tall People" – Catherine Grant"The Cancer Eaters" – K.H. Vaughan

The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade, Part Deux

A couple of weeks back, on my regular Pleasant Hill visit ( "The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade," 2023-01-27 ), the backyard was invaded by a couple of grande-size trees, which had the temerity to fall down and go boom (thank you, endless weeks of rain).

So, last weekend, I set to work with newly purchased chainsaw, hoping it would have the blade length and horsepower to show the interlopers who's boss. I cut a fair bit down to size, but for a lone old fart, it's been a pretty damned big job. Now, this morning, I excised another few dozen cylindrical feet of interloper, and for the most part, ye olde 18" Craftsman chainsaw performed well — although getting through the last dozen feet or so of the tree, where it's at its thickest, appears to be problematic, as the saw up and said "nope" once I got down there near the rootball.

The image below shows the latest, possibly final progress (the "before" image may be found at the previous blog entry, linked above). I didn't take a separate photo of the wood pile that left behind by the beast, although you can see a portion of it in the "after" image. That's far less than the whole picture, as there's a separate, smaller woodpile behind the visible one. Initially, I intended to lug the logs a bit farther back in the woods, but once I determined that their actual mass far exceeded their relatively innocuous appearance, I said fuck that noise and started piling them at the nearest possible coordinates beyond the Land Where the Grass Grows. (Yes, I know it's covered in leaves right now, but Summer Is Coming.) Now, with all that stuff done — as much as will be done, anyway, at least for now — I must ask the rhetorical question: how can so much naughty fit into such a wee little package? (I'll mention that, prior to the snapping of the photos below, yon critter traipsed across the shelves to next to the bureau you see here, prompting every item on said shelves to vacate their traditional stomping grounds and fling themselves to the floor with devastating consequences). It's gotta be rough being a cat.

Thanks, Cannoli.

The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade Part Deux

A couple of weeks back, on my regular Pleasant Hill visit ("The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade," 2023-01-27), the backyard was invaded by a couple of grande-size trees, which had the temerity to fall down and go boom (thank you, endless weeks of rain).

So, last weekend, I set to work with newly purchased chainsaw, hoping it would have the blade length and horsepower to show the interlopers who's boss. I cut a fair bit down to size, but for a lone old fart, it's been a pretty damned big job. Now, this morning, I excised another few dozen cylindrical feet of interloper, and for the most part, ye olde 18" Craftsman chainsaw performed well — although getting through the last dozen feet or so of the tree, where it's at its thickest, appears to be problematic, as the saw up and said "nope" once I got down there near the rootball.

In case there's any question about the sequence of things, the picture at left is the "before" image; the one down below is gonna be the "after" image. I didn't take a separate photo of the wood pile that left behind by the beast, although you can see a portion of it in the "after" image. That's far less than the whole picture, as there's a separate, smaller woodpile behind the visible one. Initially, I intended to lug the logs a bit farther back in the woods, but once I determined that their actual mass far exceeded their relatively innocuous appearance, I said fuck that noise and started piling them at the nearest possible coordinates beyond the Land Where the Grass Grows. (Yes, I know it's covered in leaves right now, but Summer Is Coming.)

Here's the "after" image:

Now, with all that stuff done — as much as will be done, anyway, at least for now — I must ask the rhetorical question: how can so much naughty fit into such a wee little package? (I'll mention that, prior to the snapping of the photo (below), yon critter traipsed across the shelves to next to the bureau you see here, prompting every item on said shelves to vacate their traditional stomping grounds and fling themselves to the floor with devastating consequences). It's gotta be rough being a cat.

Thanks, Cannoli.

 
 

Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary Graphic Anthology

My contributor copy of Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary Graphic Anthologyfrom Moonstone Books is in the house. This one features my original Kolchak tale, “Up From the Underground.” This really is one helluva beautiful volume!

Edited by James Aquilone, with tales by David Avallone, Jonathan Maberry, Peter David, R.C. Matheson, Kim Newman, Tim Waggoner, Steve Niles, Rodney Barnes, Gabriel Hardman, James Aquilone, Nancy A. Collins, James Chambers, Nancy Holder & Alan Philipson, David Boop, Bobby Nash, Will McDermott, John Jennings, Owl Goingback, Leverett Butts, Lisa Morton; art by Zac Atkinson, Julius Ohta, Marco Finnegan, J.K. Woodward, Paul McCaffrey, Clara Meath, Szymon Kudranski, Jonathan Marks Barravecchia, Colton Worley, and more.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV series (or, as it was originally known, simply The Night Stalker) — as well as the two original TV movies, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler, back in the early 1970s, were among those TV productions that made a powerful and lasting impression on me, and so contributing to this volume felt right, to put it mildly. The book has made it onto the preliminary ballot for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel, and it would be awesome to see it go all the way to the top. If you have ever been a fan of Carl Kolchak’s exploits, this is the volume for you.

Check Out Kolchak: The Night Stalker
50th Anniversary Graphic Anthology
From Moonstone Books Here!

It’s the Work... and Then Some

I decided to drag this post from Facebook over to my blog, mainly for posterity’s sake. It is surely vaguebooking to those who don’t know the origin, but pretty clear to those who do.   I kept saying I wasn’t gonna wade in... but I’m wading in.  It is about the work. No one has said it wasn’t. But is the bulk of the work you see and know representative of a picture that’s bigger than you might have realized, or is it an insular subset?   I’ll be very honest: particularly in my editorial capacity, I have historically said that it is all about the work, and once I put out the call, the onus is on the creator who wants me to see their work to get it to me. And sell it to me. It still is.   But because I also make it a point to listen when people whose experiences in our chosen field, whose personal and cultural backgrounds might be radically different from mine (and even from the stable of creators and readers that so many of us know so well), speak up and question whether my/our experiences and perspectives could stand some expanding, well, yeah, it might rub me wrong at first, but if that questioning doesn’t give me food for thought — or reason to explore beyond my well-honed worldview — then perhaps that’s my failing.   As writers, editors — hell, creators of all sorts — aren’t we among the most passionate, most vocal proponents of education?   Do we somehow feel we’re beyond being “educated” ourselves?  We all have our prejudices; I certainly own a set. But as far as this business goes, a thought or two (and I’m grabbing this bit from my response on a related Facebook thread):   You know, I’m 63 years old, I’m a straight white male, and I’ve been in this business a long time. I have many "old" relationships in the field. But I still consider myself a novice. I am learning — with writing, with editing — with relating to people — and although I can’t begin to read as much as I’d like to, thanks to my aging eyes giving me problems, I strive very hard to stay informed, to welcome and honor different viewpoints, and to do anything but remain stagnant. Everything I write is a practice swing in the game of getting better.   Editing-wise, certain lovely things are happening... and while the project I’m heading up honors its old-time roots, above all, it’s for playing the long game. To stay not just relevant but maybe even motivational in this business.   I simply feel this is the decent way to be. And that said, despite being a pretty well-educated old fart, maybe I don’t yet know enough about THE WORK to make as informed an evaluation as I thought I did.

The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade

I posted last week that the prodigious rainfall of the past month or so (with yet more in the forecast) did the root systems of the local flora no favors. At Pleasant Hill, a.k.a. The Old Homestead, in Martinsville, after more inches of rain in a few days than we should see in months, the roots of a couple of trees on the hillside behind the house gave up the ghost. Fortunately, the house escaped unscathed (although the Greensboro homestead is still awash in mud). Possibly unfortunately, there are still a lot of trees within falling range. Make no mistake, I love my woods, I like trees, and a totally cleared lot and neighborhood is the bane of my existence.
But I so dislike trees what cost me insane amounts of money.
 Anyway, this business left me with the question: pay the professionals to do an expensive job or spring for a chainsaw and show the deadwood who’s boss? Well, I can’t say I haven’t lamented not having a chainsaw for the occasional jobs that have begged for one, so... I sprung for a chainsaw.
Picture left, taken on the day of the falling flora. Picture right, after a couple of hours work this morning. I will tell you, that is one heavy motherfuckin tree right there. For a one-man job, it was pretty rigorous, so I'll be back at it again tomorrow — and for the final clean-up, probably next week as well. Did I mention I has a tired?
Well, I do. Just getting going

A Graveside Chat With David Niall Wilson

USA TODAY–bestselling author David Niall Wilson has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-1980s. He has written over a dozen standalone novels as well as numerous novels for his own DeChance Chronicles and Cletus J. Diggs series, plus tie-in novels for Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate Atlantis, World of Wraith, and others, plus ten short story collections (not to mention about 150 stories in various magazines and anthologies). An ordained minister, former editor of The Tome magazine, former President of the Horror Writers Association, and recipient of multiple HWA Bram Stoker Awards, Dave is CEO and founder of Crossroad Press, which occasionally keeps him a little busy. His collection, The Devil’s in the Flaws & Other Dark Truths, is scheduled for release in January 2023.

Thanks for taking time out for A Graveside Chat, Dave.

AGC: You’ve been a prominent figure in the speculative fiction field for four decades, there or about, and you’ve not only kept up with its evolution but influenced it, particularly with Crossroad Press. What are some of the biggest changes — and challenges — you’ve experienced in this business over these decades, be it from the perspective of author, editor, and/or publisher?

DNW: The Internet has changed the world, and writing is no exception. Ebooks and simpler avenues for self-publishing have opened a lot of doors, which, in one sense, is good. The world of publishing, when I started, had clear boundaries. Success was a sale to NYC, and you could get there through the other side of the boundary, the small press. But slots were very limited. Agents and editors were like gatekeepers and thousands of books, good, bad, wonderful, and awful were simply never in a position to have a legitimate chance. That has all changed.

That’s the upside. The downside is those thousands of books are all out there now. Some are good, some are awful, many are edited poorly but packaged with professional covers. More are awful than good, and as this becomes clear to consumers, it becomes more difficult to sell an independently published book. It’s also a totally one-sided marketing war — NYC with millions of dollars, and the rest of us with, well, Bookbub, who now take too many titles, still charge a fortune, and have become hit-and-miss. More than ever before, the key to writing success has become a mix of talent and visibility, the second being the hardest thing to achieve. I think the floor has leveled over the years, but you have to be very active, you have to remain relevant to the world, read what is selling now and not what sold twenty years ago. It’s a very volatile industry.

AGC: You’re widely read, not just in speculative fiction, but in all varieties of literature. Who do you consider some of your primary influences as a writer? What most inspires you as a storyteller?

DNW: Sometimes questions like this flummox me. I am probably influenced by thousands of books and writers, but I can trim it down and offer reasons. I love the work of Edgar Allan Poe, his themes, and his sense of dread. Modern writers I have learned pacing and formula from Stephen King, writing on different levels from Peter Straub, Kathe Koja, and Poppy Z. Brite showed me how inconsequential limits are…

More recently I’ve learned things that limit my writing by reaching beyond my normal reading… authors like Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca, and Gemma Amor have shown me different perspectives. Stephen Graham Jones, a recent obsession, has a voice he can hit where it’s him telling the story, and it’s mesmerizing. Grady Hendrix, Paul Tremblay, I steal bits and pieces. And books like The Things They Carried, where you pick up on how objects and settings can anchor your writing. It’s an endless stream. Lately, I’ve found rabbit holes while writing letters to my daughter in college, adding trivia to each one, which have given me things I know I will use. Maybe I influence myself? I hope I never cease finding new inspiration.

AGC: You’ve collaborated with other authors on numerous works — many of which appear in the volume, Intermusings: A Cabal of Dark Fiction, which features a broad sampling of your collaborative stories. Do you particularly enjoy collaborating with other authors? Is there anyone with whom you’d especially like to collaborate that you haven’t yet? Do you have more upcoming collaborative work scheduled?

DNW: Currently I’m not collaborating on anything. I think my last major collaboration was with my wife, Trish, when we wrote Remember Bowling Green (all proceeds to the ACLU). I have had a lot of interesting collaboration experiences. I’ve written the most with Brian A. Hopkins, Brett A. Savory and Trish, but, as you know, that book is FULL of collaborations. I find that when it works, when the editing goes back and forth a few times, a new voice arises. It’s not what either author would have done, but it builds on the strengths of both.

AGC: You are an insanely prolific author, even with Crossroad Press (and a full-time day job) occupying what is presumably more than a negligible amount of your time. (Do you ever sleep???) What do you have on your upcoming agenda(s) as a writer, editor, and/or publisher that you can talk about here?

DNW: It’s funny you say that. Up until last spring, I was becoming less and less prolific. I’ve started publishing stories again, have a lot of things in the works, a novella upcoming, and other things in anthologies, but only recently. Before that I have done nothing but poke at it since around the time the Orange Anguish became president. I’m pulling it all back together and feel as if I’ve written a lot of things lately, new things I’m proud of, pushing some boundaries. I have at least two stories in anthologies this year. I have an NFT-only book of stories involving Potatoes coming out through Book.iO (It would take an entire separate interview to cover all of that). I have at least two novels in serious progress, a novella, and some stories that are for markets who have solicited me. It’s a sort of rebirth. I’ve been asleep creatively for a very long time.

This year, finally, my anthology The Canterbury Nightmares will be published, and I had a lot of fun with that, but the general miasma of the last few years has prevented it from happening as quickly as it should. You keep moving or you grow moss and mold, so I’ll be writing a lot. My collection, The Devil’s in the Flaws & Other Dark Truths, just released and seems to be doing pretty well.

AGC: You have written a lot of series projects as well as standalones. Which do you prefer, and why? What can we expect to see in the future?

DNW: I’ve noticed over time that almost everything I’ve written ties together. I mention a place, or an event, and suddenly there is a link between Deep Blue and Donovan DeChance. I write in a set number of fictional locations, which probably facilitated this. I’ve created a sub-page on my website called “The Worlds of David Niall Wilson,” where I’m relaunching all of the books, one at a time, as NFT collectible editions (and eventually readers editions) through a company called Book.IO.

The first to come out was Heart of a Dragon, so the DeChance Chronicles will come out first. Readers of my work will know this ties in with the Cletus J. Diggs stories, the works I’ve done with Poe as a character, and the novels of the O.C.L.T. – but the standalone novels like Deep Blue, Ancient Eyes, and Darkness Falling intersect again and again.

I see myself taking twin paths going forward. I intend to continue the series books because I love the characters, but I am also working on new stories, a novella, and at least two novels that don’t directly connect — at least not yet. Still hoping for that one break-out, as are we all.

Visit Dave on the Web at
DavidNiallWilson.com