Stephen Mark Rainey's Blog, page 43

Now Playing: Running Home to the Shadows!

It’s here: Running Home to the Shadows, from editor Jim Beard and publisher Becky Books. This volume, which features plenty of recollections about Dark Shadows from a host of writing professionals — including yours truly — plus a foreword by Dark Shadows’ own Kathryn L Scott (Maggie Evans, Josette DuPres, Rachel Drummond, and others).

From the editor: 

School is out, and Barnabas is IN!

They were a generation all their own, the army of children who ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows, TV’s very first supernatural soap. A breed apart, they set aside the worship of mundane pop stars to follow vampires, witches, and werewolves. From 1966 to 1971, they were daytime Monster Kids… and today they have stories to tell.

Writer-editor Jim Beard has gathered these grown-up kids together in this tome to tell those tales. Their experiences are sometimes tragic and terrifying, yet also uplifting and inspirational, but above all, Dark Shadows touched them so deeply as to leave an indelible impression on their lives that lasts to this day.

Return to Collinwood to brave the stormy nights and rainswept days of yore to listen to this coven of writers spin yarns of childhood encounters with Barnabas, Angelique, Quentin, Vicky, Maggie, and their compatriots. Cross the threshold of the Old House, take a seat by the crackling fire, and make yourself comfortable to the strains of maudlin music issuing forth from the gramophone — the ghosts of the past are about to arise in Running Home to Shadows. Won’t you join us?

Edited by Jim Beard with Charles R. Rutledge

Cover illustration by Mark Maddox with logo design and formatting by Maggie Ryel

Foreword by Kathryn Leigh Scott

Featuring essays by Greg Cox, Kathleen O’Shea David, Mark Dawidziak, Dave Dykema, Bob Freeman, Ed Gross, Nancy Holder, Tina Hunt, Katherine Kerestman, Mark Maddox (with Ed Catto), Elizabeth Massie, Kimberly Oswald, Martin Powell, Dana Pride, Stephen Mark Rainey, Michael Rogers, Charles R. Rutledge, Chris Ryan, Frank Schildiner, Duane Spurlock, and Jeff Thompson

Afterword by Rich Handley

Order Running Home to the Shadows here.

Anthony Horowitz’s Forever and a Day

I grew up reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, and even the least of them — The Man with the Golden Gun , I’d say — still retained a crucial bit of 007 magic. The myriad reboots of the literary Bond — all of varying quality, few of them very satisfying — boggle the mind, so I recently decided to try the relatively recent entries that ostensibly follow the Fleming canon. Having been disappointed by William Boyd’s Solo and Sebastian Faulks’s Devil May Care , I approached Horowitz’s Forever and a Day with some trepidation. Happily, however, as soon as I started reading, I felt a real connection with Fleming’s character and atmosphere. As the novel progressed, the portrayals of the primary villains and Sixtine, our requisite female character — felt well-drawn and engaging. Plot-wise, Forever and a Day is several steps above Solo and Devil May Care ; it still seems to lose its way — or feel too derivative — on a few occasions, but for the most part, it hits the right notes. If nothing else, this one left me with a sense of enjoyment rather than disappointment, and I will definitely give Horowitz’s  Trigger Mortis a look-see.

Black Raven Books Presents FUGUE DEVIL: RESURGENCE!

If you know about the Fugue Devil, it knows about you. If you see the Fugue Devil, it will come for you.

Many decades ago, summoned by the power of music, The Fugue Devil   — a dreadful, malevolent entity from another place — entered our world. Every seventeen years, it reappears to satiate its hunger for unsuspecting souls.

Author Stephen Mark Rainey’s terrifying novelette, “Fugue Devil,” originally appeared in his first fiction collection, Fugue Devil & Other Weird Horrors in 1992. Now, thiry years later, Black Raven Books brings you Fugue Devil: Resurgence, which features the original novelette; its sequel, “The Devil’s Eye”; and ten more tales of horror and mind-bending terror.

This incredible volume includes stories originally presented by such superlative publishers as Borderlands Press, Dark Regions, and others, as well as several new stories appearing in print for the first time. Available in ebook, paperback, and signed/limited edition hardback. Release date is May 1, 2022.

You may preorder the Kindle edition now, here: Fugue Devil: Resurgence for your Kindle.

Fugue Devil: Resurgence in the spotlight at Buttonholed Book Reviews

Black Raven Books Presents Fugue Devil: Resurgence

If you know about the Fugue Devil, it knows about you. If you see the Fugue Devil, it will come for you.

Many decades ago, summoned by the power of music, The Fugue Devil   — a dreadful, malevolent entity from another place — entered our world. Every seventeen years, it reappears to satiate its hunger for unsuspecting souls.

Author Stephen Mark Rainey’s terrifying novelette, “Fugue Devil,” originally appeared in his first fiction collection, Fugue Devil & Other Weird Horrors in 1992. Now, thiry years later, Black Raven Books brings you Fugue Devil: Resurgence, which features the original novelette; its sequel, “The Devil’s Eye”; and ten more tales of horror and mind-bending terror.

This incredible volume includes stories originally presented by such superlative publishers as Borderlands Press, Dark Regions, and others, as well as several new stories appearing in print for the first time. Available in ebook, paperback, and signed/limited edition hardback. Release date is May 1, 2022. Ordering information to follow shortly!

Bad George and Other Blasts From the Past

A busy week it was. Hardly unexpectedly, I received a call from my former boss, asking if I would care to put in a few hours per month freelancing, since, without me, they're pretty much up to their ears in alligators. It's actually a welcome opportunity to keep doing a job I know and enjoy. Plus there's the extra bucks, which can't hurt. I also made considerable progress on Georgia: The Haunting of Tate's Mill. I can see the light at the end of this one.

A few new, local geocaches came out this past week, so I put in a couple of rigorous cache hunts — one in the dumping rain that so waterlogged me that I still have water in my shoes. Friend Old Rob and I shared in the first-to-find, so that made us both smile real big.
In Martinsville over the weekend, I discovered a couple of folders that contained scads of school papers and artwork by both my brother and me. I had no idea they existed. Some went back as far as kindergarten. The image you see upstairs there is a pen & ink rendering of my great-uncle Herbert's place in Gainesville, GA, which I drew in the late 1980s. My aunt Dot made it into the cover of a greeting card. Perhaps my favorite discovery among these treasures was an unfinished class drawing from second grade. Written on it was the following exchange between my teacher, Ms. Jackson, and me:
Mark: "Sorry I did not get throu. Goarge botherd me." Ms. Jackson: "Please try to finish your work in the morning. You do not need to talk to George."
I remember George well. I haven't seen him since early in elementary school, but I did find him online. He is apparently an attorney over in Winston-Salem.
Many of my old drawings were plenty violent, with Indian massacres, knights battling on castle towers, dinosaurs and other monsters chowing down on innocent passersby. Some were a bit nicer. There were drawings of my family traveling in an airplane; a pretty decent rendering of my dog, Patty; and a number of reasonably well-rendered space rockets. Below is a drawing I made in third grade, which I thought was actually pretty cool. On Saturday, I rode up to Rocky Mount to hunt a few caches. It was pretty chilly and very windy for most of the time I was out and about. The couple of hides I found at the Franklin County Parks & Recreation Center on Sontag Road proved simple enough. But at Waid Park, I turned a medium difficulty hike into a rugged and fairly risky venture by doing what I tend to do best: plow straight ahead from point A to point B, damning the torpedoes in the process. I ended up skirting a lengthy portion of the Pigg River, the banks of which were steep and treacherous, and from which a bad step would have had disastrous consequences. Fortunately, I managed to maintain my footing. Once past that little obstacle, I found myself negotiating some hairy inclines and dense, difficult woods. But again, I prevailed, and, soon enough, had the cache in hand. As one might surmise, I felt the effects of this little outing pretty severely a little later. However, once back at home, a fine dinner and some wine with Ms. B. made for a comfortable, relaxing evening.
This morning, friend Natalie (a.k.a. Fishdownthestairs) and I headed down to Siler City, where we knocked out a few entertaining caches we both still needed.
Ms. B. and I are currently working our way through Twin Peaks again, from start to finish. The craving was upon both of us, and it's been quite the treat, since I haven't watched it with her for about a decade. And she'd never seen the third season (The Return), which we just started this evening. She's not the devoted David Lynch fan that I am, but she's been enjoying it so far.
For the coming week, I'm hoping to reach the end of Georgia: The Haunting of Tate's Mill. I'm definitely ready to get this one out to the publisher and into the hands of readers.
All righty then. Get on with you. Peace out. My first-grade rendering of a United DC-8, circa 1966 Cowboys and Indians having a bad time of it, from my kindergarten days Fire at Camelot! One of my third-grade drawings

Little Mountain Falls, Cane Creek Mountain, and More

I don't think my knees — and possibly the rest of me — have been this worn out for a while. At least not since I went up Grassy Hill Ridge in Rocky Mount, VA, for a geocache several weeks ago (“Oh, My Achin Feetz,” Feb. 21, 2022). On Friday, I departed Greensboro early in the day, bound for Fairy Stone Park, VA, where a couple of newish caches — one traditional (“A Bench with a View #4” GC9PFKB) and one EarthCache (“Little Mountain Falls” GC9EDWH) — lay in wait for me. The steep and sometimes rugged terrain at Fairy Stone has many times both done me a world of good and damn near done me in. The hike on Friday afternoon was far from the longest I’ve undertaken there, but the elevation changes along the way presented both my legs and my lungs with a healthy challenge. There’s a plenty of up and down both ways, but for the most part, the outbound journey was primarily downhill, leaving the rigorous uphill trek for the return. The scenery in this particular corner of the world is gorgeous, even between seasons as we are. Give it a couple of weeks, and these woods will be as green and lush as a rain forest. In autumn, the colors, as I can testify from considerable experience, are stunning. Little Mountain Falls isn’t especially huge, but the stream trickles down numerous tiers from a significant height — considerably higher than the photograph on the left can capture.

Happily, I found the caches I sought and lived to hike another day. Indeed, I was soon back at it, this time on a regular Sunday geocaching outing with a pair of old farts (friends Diefenbaker, a.k.a. Scott, and Old Rob, a.k.a. Old Rob) at the Cane Creek Mountain Preserve in Alamance County. The hike here, while quite pleasant, was not as strenuous as the one at Fairy Stone. Mind you, it could have been, had we dragged Robert up the mountain to find a number of caches he had not yet claimed. However, since Scott and I both had already found those, Rob declined, ostensibly to save us from undertaking a rugged hike for caches we had already found. When it comes down to it, I’m reasonably certain Old Rob simply didn’t cotton to the idea of having cardiac arrest until he had found all the other caches we had targeted for this trip. At Cane Creek, we found one cache relatively quickly, while the other required an inordinate amount of time searching due to mercilessly bouncing coordinates. In the end, though... happily... we prevailed.

Once done at Cane Creek, we zipped over to the nearby community of Swepsonville, where a relatively short trek on the trail took us to another newish cache. Here, our quarry was easily found and required no hairy terrain stunts to reach. However, I kind of wanted to undertake a hairy terrain stunt, and since the the opportunity was there, with Mr. Scott’s assistance, I availed myself to it (see the photo above). And then, on to nearby Mebane we went, where we found a couple of more relatively easy hides and then busted the hell out of some lunch at the excellent Catrina's Mexican Restaurant, which Ms. B. had recommended following a visit during one of her artsy-fartsy-craftsy retreats in that area.

Next week... believe it or not, I foresee more hiking and caching. Until then, this is your host, Damned Rodan, saying—

Three Old Farts — Old Rodan, Old Rob, Old Diefenbaker — at the Haw River in Swepsonville

Recalling The Monster Times

After posting yesterday about actor Akira Takarada’s passing, I ended up browsing for all kinds of old Toho monster stuff online. One thing led to another, and I discovered (or actually rediscovered, since I had happened upon it some time back) a site that features full issues (by way of JPGs) of The Monster Times, a tabloid-style publication that ran for several years in the 1970s. My first published work for which I was paid — a filmbook of Godzilla vs. the Thing — appeared in issue #42 of TMT (July 1975). I remember discovering TMT at a bookstore in Atlanta when I was a young teen and being blown away that such a publication existed. It was printed on cheap newsprint, featured tons of articles and photos from my favorite monster movies (especially Godzilla and other daikaiju flicks), and leaned distinctly toward humor. Not necessarily good humor, but humor nonetheless. Eventually, issues of TMT began appearing at our local newsstand in Martinsville, VA, which delighted me no end.

I remember picking up an issue one day — Fall of 1973, when I was 14 — and going utterly mad to find the familiar poster art of one of my favorite Godzilla movies, Destroy All Monsters (which remains to this day a favorite). Not only that, the filmbook’s author was Tom Murdock, a pen pal I had met sometime earlier by way of the late Greg Shoemaker’s wonderful Japanese Fantasy Film Journal. I immediately asked Tom how he’d gotten published in The Monster Times, and he said he basically asked them if they wanted a filmbook of Destroy All Monsters. They said yes, so he wrote it and sent it to them. They published it and sent him money. So, I immediately wrote The Monster Times and asked them if they wanted a filmbook of Godzilla vs. the Thing. They said yes, so I wrote it and sent it to them. They published it and sent me money (though not all that quickly or without prompting; some things never change).

In the typical way of the publishing business, it took some time between submission, acceptance, and publication. I wrote the Godzilla vs. the Thing filmbook when I was 14 going on 15. I was 16 before the issue came out. Regardless, seeing it on newsstand shelves was, at that time, so exciting that it’s something of a miracle that my teenage body didn’t shake itself apart. During that waiting period—in 1974—I had entered the publishing arena myself with the first issue of Japanese Giants, a cobbled-together fanzine that also featured a Destroy All Monsters filmbook (also by your humble narrator). I only published that one issue, but JG managed to continue for over two more decades, first by way of editor/publisher Brad Boyle and then under the expert helmsmanship of longtime friend Ed Godziszewki.

The Monster Times closed up shop in 1976, with issue #48, so it was well for me that my filmbook saw print before the publication’s time ran out. At one time, I had a sizable collection of TMT issues, but that newsprint tended to not weather the years very well, especially since, early on, I didn’t have the forethought to protect them adequately. Still, I have these two issues, and several others — mostly featuring Godzilla — and it would be kind of nice, I supposed, if they managed to outlast me.

The Monster Times #26 (featuring Destroy All Monsters) at Zombo's Closet

The Monster Times #42 (featuring Godzilla vs. the Thing) at Zombo’s Closet

R.I.P. Akira Takarada 1934–2022

I was saddened to learn that actor Akira Takarada has passed away. He starred in numerous classic Toho films, from the original Godzilla to Godzilla: Final Wars, and dozens of others in between. Takarada-san was active at fan conventions for many years; I’m sorry I never had a chance to meet him in person. Sadly, there aren’t many of the most notable cast and crew members remaining from the days of Toho’s early classics. A wonderful talent he was, and by all accounts, a true gentleman. 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gone on a bit of a daikaiju binge, including several that starred Takarada-san. I expect I’ll be putting on a bunch more in the coming days.

Coming Soon: Death’s Garden Revisited

Another upcoming book release featuring an article of mine is Death’s Garden Revisited, a collection of essays about particularly intriguing graveyards and cemeteries. My experience, perhaps not altogether unexpectedly, involves geocaching. Hunting caches has taken me to innumerable boneyards over the years, and many of my favorites have been in or around graveyards — especially very old ones, such as the Patrick-Watson graveyard, not far from my place in Guilford County, NC. I posted a little about it (among other happenings) in 2019 ( “Anyone for Scorpion?” June 15, 2019 )

Some years back, editor Loren Rhoads assembled a collection of essays for her original book, titled  Death’s Garden , and it has clearly warranted a second volume. I’ll post additional updates and ordering information as soon as available.
Until then, be scary!

Coming Soon: Running Home to Shadows

On the heels of Bob Issel's Our Shadowed Past — a huge volume of essays from fans and the stars of legendary soap Dark Shadows (in which I had a hand in the production) — comes Running Home to Shadows, from Jim Beard and Becky Books. I also have a new essay in this volume, which features plenty of recollections about Dark Shadows from a host of writing professionals — plus a foreword by Dark Shadows's own Kathryn Leigh Scott.

From the editor: 

School is out, and Barnabas is IN!

They were a generation all their own, the army of children who ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows, TV’s very first supernatural soap. A breed apart, they set aside the worship of mundane pop stars to follow vampires, witches, and werewolves. From 1966 to 1971, they were daytime Monster Kids… and today they have stories to tell.

Writer-editor Jim Beard has gathered these grown-up kids together in this tome to tell those tales. Their experiences are sometimes tragic and terrifying, yet also uplifting and inspirational, but above all, Dark Shadows touched them so deeply as to leave an indelible impression on their lives that lasts to this day.

Return to Collinwood to brave the stormy nights and rainswept days of yore to listen to this coven of writers spin yarns of childhood encounters with Barnabas, Angelique, Quentin, Vicky, Maggie, and their compatriots. Cross the threshold of the Old House, take a seat by the crackling fire, and make yourself comfortable to the strains of maudlin music issuing forth from the gramophone — the ghosts of the past are about to arise in Running Home to Shadows. Won’t you join us?

Edited by Jim Beard with Charles R. Rutledge

Cover illustration by Mark Maddox with logo design and formatting by Maggie Ryel

Foreword by Kathryn Leigh Scott

Featuring essays by Greg Cox, Kathleen O’Shea David, Mark Dawidziak, Dave Dykema, Bob Freeman, Ed Gross, Nancy Holder, Tina Hunt, Katherine Kerestman, Mark Maddox (with Ed Catto), Elizabeth Massie, Kimberly Oswald, Martin Powell, Dana Pride, Stephen Mark Rainey, Michael Rogers, Charles R. Rutledge, Chris Ryan, Frank Schildiner, Duane Spurlock, and Jeff Thompson

Afterword by Rich Handley

Stay tuned for release news and ordering information.