Devils You Know
Devils You Know
Today would have been my father's 81st birthday. This is an especially melancholy fact because he died in 1993, at the age of fifty-four, and though he lived a full life in the sense of experience, travel and accomplishment, he hardly was granted that privilege where it (perhaps) counts most -- in the actual number of his living days.
I was barely twenty-one years old when my father died, and at that point in my life little more than a dissolute fraternity boy -- drunk most of the time, failing all of his classes, content simply to chase women and sleep 'til one in the afternoon. Part of this behavior could be traced to the strain the terminal illness of a parent places on a son, and part of it was simple selfishness. In any event, my father never got to see much in the way of academic excellence or creative success from his youngest child, nor much maturity or responsibility.
Now, perhaps it's just a coincidence, but this morning, his birthday, I awoke to discover that my book DEVILS YOU KNOW had been named a Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for Excellence in Independent Publishing. As the Hoffer people told me in their message, "We consider this a distinction of its own merit." That is because though the Hoffer Awards have many thousands of entrants every year, they list less than 10% as Finalists, and bestow an award upon each (hence the capital "F").
This is an especially satisfying moment for me, not merely because of the timing, but because the work in question is perhaps the most personal thing I have yet published.
DEVILS YOU KNOW is a collection of thirteen short stories I wrote from 1990 to 2016. Some of them had been previously published, others I wrote specifically for the anthology itself. As I noted in the book's introduction, "these stories are not my life's work, but they are the work of a lifetime." Twenty-six years of it, anyway. I published DEVILS mainly because I was anxious to show the world that the genre of my debut novel, CAGE LIFE, was hardly the limit of my literary ambitions. In traditional publishing, when a person writes a horror novel, or a mystery or a thriller or a work of romantic suspense or any other damned thing, they are immediately pigeonholed: their publishers, agents and promoters say, "Good! Now write one of these a year until you die." Well, CAGE LIFE was a gritty, almost Pulpish crime novel, and while I enjoyed every moment of writing it (well, most of 'em, anyway) I hardly wanted to spend the rest of my life jamming lightning back into that particular bottle. The truth is, I read in almost every genre: why shouldn't I write in them all, too, if that's what pleases me?
Refusal to be pigeonholed, and an extreme reluctance to publish under a pseudonym -- my parents gave me my name, why use another? -- are the principal reasons I decided against traditional publishing as platform for my works. Had I a traditional publisher, DEVILS YOU KNOW would never have seen the light of day. They would not have allowed it. And frankly, the stories contained within are too goddamned good not to be read by anyone curious enough to do so. So I'd like to take a moment to introduce you briefly to each of the thirteen stories within:
THE ADVERSARIAL PROCESS - There are seven stages to grief. They begin with shock and end with acceptance, and somewhere in between are bargaining and anger. But in the mind of a powerful man, a man used to getting what he wants, bargaining and anger might become confused -- or simply fused. So that what follows is not so much bargaining as blackmail. Or extortion. This is the story of a high-powered lawyer in the depths of grief, whose grudge against God takes a turn so dark he needs a match to light his way.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS - Two guys walk into a bar. One is a gangster. One used to be. One is deep in the Life. The other is in Witness Protection. Time has passed, but it does not heal all wounds... and now there is time for one more.
A STORY NEVER TOLD - Paris, 1944. The Allies have liberated the City of Lights after years of grim German occupation. A young American infantry lieutenant, on his way back to the front after recovering from a wound, encounters a larger-than-life war correspondent in a bar on the Rue Daunou. And discovers that it isn't always wise to meet your heroes. Especially when you've had too much to drink.
NOSFERATU - Hannibal Raus believes in Hitler and his vision for Germany. He's willing to kill for it and, in the most honorable traditions of his country, he's willing to die for it, too. But when his determination to win a battle against the Soviet army lands him in an SS field hospital, he discovers there are men willing to go much further than he is for the sake of victory. All the way to hell.
IDENTITY CRISIS - Billy Verecker has a problem. He doesn't know who he is. He never has. And the harder he tries to find an identity, the more elusive it becomes. Would anyone notice if he died? Probably not. But that thought leads to another. Would anyone notice if he killed?
THE SHROUD - It's 1865, the South has lost the war, and there's nothing to be done for an ex-rebel but ride home and pick up the pieces. That's just what Simon Bonventre, the heir to the mighty plantation Court Royal, intends to do. There are only a few small obstacles: the bullet in his ribs, the fact that his horse is dying and the company of Union cavalry in his way.
SHADOWS AND GLORY - Germany. 1940. Hitler has ordered his U-boats to starve Britain into submission, and Commander Kurt Reinhard has answered the call -- so successfully he is now known as the "Lion of the Atlantic." Only his son Karl suspects that his father's devotion to the regime is not what it should be. But can a boy raised by the Hitler Youth reconcile loyalty to the Führer with love for a father who longs to turn his back on war?
D.S.A. - MacAfee is not the questioning sort. He marches where he's told to march, burns what he's told to burn, kills who he's told to kill. It's easier that way; easier to do and not to think. Then one day, in the middle of the Second American Civil War, he meets a man who has a story to tell, and that story gets MacAfee questioning everything.
ROADTRIP - There are times when what you see is what you get. There are others when nothing is what it is seems. In this story, four old friends hit the road in a convertible as the sun goes down, looking to have a little fun. But just what constitutes their idea of fun is anybody's guess...and somebody's nightmare.
A FEVER IN THE BLOOD - Revolutions start in the damnedest places. Beer halls in Munich. Bastilles in Paris. Village greens in Lexington and Concord. You never know what's going to set people off. It could be taxes. It could be war. It could be oppression, racism or greed. In this case, however, it's none of the above. What destroys the social order and plunges the whole city into chaos? An idiot on a cell phone. Think it's implausible? Look who's running for office.
THE ACTION - When his outfit gets diverted from the Eastern Front to help suppress the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, veteran German soldier Gerhard "Gigi" Gadermann just wants to make sure his naive young cousin survives the battle. It turns out, however, that there are much worse dangers lurking in Warsaw than bullets and bombs: there is the awful realization that the most terrifying thing a man can face in war is himself.
PLEAS AND THANK YOUS - Johnny Morra is no stranger to violence. He's a gangster, for God's sake. But when his boss orders a man tortured to death with a chain saw for a minor transgression, Johnny decides he's had enough. He's leaving the mob, right now. The only thing in his way is...the rest of the mob.
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW - Did you ever wonder what you were doing here? What your purpose was -- in this life, on this earth, at this moment? You're not alone. Doubt is everywhere. It creeps into the most unlikely places. The most unlikely people. The most unlikely...things. But never fear. There are those who don't have those doubts, those fears, or those feelings of existential angst. In fact, there are those who don't feel anything at all. And tonight, you're going to meet one of them. Isn't that comforting?
Thus DEVILS YOU KNOW. An unlucky number of stories come together to underscore a specific theme: that our devils -- fear and lust, hatred and jealousy, madness and bigotry and wrath and spite -- are part of who we are, but not always our ultimate evils and, in any case, occasionally good for a chuckle or two. If you know me at all, personally or through my work, you know that I believe that while the devil often gains the upper hand in our lives, his victories tend to be fleeting. It's true that darkness is the natural state of the universe, but it's also true -- scientifically true -- that darkness cannot exist in the presence of light.
Well. It's 5:03 PM, a rare-as-a-total-eclipse thunderstorm has just broken over my modest Burbank home, and I'm off to Hollywood to watch a screening of ALIEN RESURRECTION with my friend Mark, who, as it happened, played one of the aliens in the film. It's a strange life we lead, my devils and I... but we wouldn't have it any other way.
Happy birthday, Dad.
Today would have been my father's 81st birthday. This is an especially melancholy fact because he died in 1993, at the age of fifty-four, and though he lived a full life in the sense of experience, travel and accomplishment, he hardly was granted that privilege where it (perhaps) counts most -- in the actual number of his living days.
I was barely twenty-one years old when my father died, and at that point in my life little more than a dissolute fraternity boy -- drunk most of the time, failing all of his classes, content simply to chase women and sleep 'til one in the afternoon. Part of this behavior could be traced to the strain the terminal illness of a parent places on a son, and part of it was simple selfishness. In any event, my father never got to see much in the way of academic excellence or creative success from his youngest child, nor much maturity or responsibility.
Now, perhaps it's just a coincidence, but this morning, his birthday, I awoke to discover that my book DEVILS YOU KNOW had been named a Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for Excellence in Independent Publishing. As the Hoffer people told me in their message, "We consider this a distinction of its own merit." That is because though the Hoffer Awards have many thousands of entrants every year, they list less than 10% as Finalists, and bestow an award upon each (hence the capital "F").
This is an especially satisfying moment for me, not merely because of the timing, but because the work in question is perhaps the most personal thing I have yet published.
DEVILS YOU KNOW is a collection of thirteen short stories I wrote from 1990 to 2016. Some of them had been previously published, others I wrote specifically for the anthology itself. As I noted in the book's introduction, "these stories are not my life's work, but they are the work of a lifetime." Twenty-six years of it, anyway. I published DEVILS mainly because I was anxious to show the world that the genre of my debut novel, CAGE LIFE, was hardly the limit of my literary ambitions. In traditional publishing, when a person writes a horror novel, or a mystery or a thriller or a work of romantic suspense or any other damned thing, they are immediately pigeonholed: their publishers, agents and promoters say, "Good! Now write one of these a year until you die." Well, CAGE LIFE was a gritty, almost Pulpish crime novel, and while I enjoyed every moment of writing it (well, most of 'em, anyway) I hardly wanted to spend the rest of my life jamming lightning back into that particular bottle. The truth is, I read in almost every genre: why shouldn't I write in them all, too, if that's what pleases me?
Refusal to be pigeonholed, and an extreme reluctance to publish under a pseudonym -- my parents gave me my name, why use another? -- are the principal reasons I decided against traditional publishing as platform for my works. Had I a traditional publisher, DEVILS YOU KNOW would never have seen the light of day. They would not have allowed it. And frankly, the stories contained within are too goddamned good not to be read by anyone curious enough to do so. So I'd like to take a moment to introduce you briefly to each of the thirteen stories within:
THE ADVERSARIAL PROCESS - There are seven stages to grief. They begin with shock and end with acceptance, and somewhere in between are bargaining and anger. But in the mind of a powerful man, a man used to getting what he wants, bargaining and anger might become confused -- or simply fused. So that what follows is not so much bargaining as blackmail. Or extortion. This is the story of a high-powered lawyer in the depths of grief, whose grudge against God takes a turn so dark he needs a match to light his way.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS - Two guys walk into a bar. One is a gangster. One used to be. One is deep in the Life. The other is in Witness Protection. Time has passed, but it does not heal all wounds... and now there is time for one more.
A STORY NEVER TOLD - Paris, 1944. The Allies have liberated the City of Lights after years of grim German occupation. A young American infantry lieutenant, on his way back to the front after recovering from a wound, encounters a larger-than-life war correspondent in a bar on the Rue Daunou. And discovers that it isn't always wise to meet your heroes. Especially when you've had too much to drink.
NOSFERATU - Hannibal Raus believes in Hitler and his vision for Germany. He's willing to kill for it and, in the most honorable traditions of his country, he's willing to die for it, too. But when his determination to win a battle against the Soviet army lands him in an SS field hospital, he discovers there are men willing to go much further than he is for the sake of victory. All the way to hell.
IDENTITY CRISIS - Billy Verecker has a problem. He doesn't know who he is. He never has. And the harder he tries to find an identity, the more elusive it becomes. Would anyone notice if he died? Probably not. But that thought leads to another. Would anyone notice if he killed?
THE SHROUD - It's 1865, the South has lost the war, and there's nothing to be done for an ex-rebel but ride home and pick up the pieces. That's just what Simon Bonventre, the heir to the mighty plantation Court Royal, intends to do. There are only a few small obstacles: the bullet in his ribs, the fact that his horse is dying and the company of Union cavalry in his way.
SHADOWS AND GLORY - Germany. 1940. Hitler has ordered his U-boats to starve Britain into submission, and Commander Kurt Reinhard has answered the call -- so successfully he is now known as the "Lion of the Atlantic." Only his son Karl suspects that his father's devotion to the regime is not what it should be. But can a boy raised by the Hitler Youth reconcile loyalty to the Führer with love for a father who longs to turn his back on war?
D.S.A. - MacAfee is not the questioning sort. He marches where he's told to march, burns what he's told to burn, kills who he's told to kill. It's easier that way; easier to do and not to think. Then one day, in the middle of the Second American Civil War, he meets a man who has a story to tell, and that story gets MacAfee questioning everything.
ROADTRIP - There are times when what you see is what you get. There are others when nothing is what it is seems. In this story, four old friends hit the road in a convertible as the sun goes down, looking to have a little fun. But just what constitutes their idea of fun is anybody's guess...and somebody's nightmare.
A FEVER IN THE BLOOD - Revolutions start in the damnedest places. Beer halls in Munich. Bastilles in Paris. Village greens in Lexington and Concord. You never know what's going to set people off. It could be taxes. It could be war. It could be oppression, racism or greed. In this case, however, it's none of the above. What destroys the social order and plunges the whole city into chaos? An idiot on a cell phone. Think it's implausible? Look who's running for office.
THE ACTION - When his outfit gets diverted from the Eastern Front to help suppress the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, veteran German soldier Gerhard "Gigi" Gadermann just wants to make sure his naive young cousin survives the battle. It turns out, however, that there are much worse dangers lurking in Warsaw than bullets and bombs: there is the awful realization that the most terrifying thing a man can face in war is himself.
PLEAS AND THANK YOUS - Johnny Morra is no stranger to violence. He's a gangster, for God's sake. But when his boss orders a man tortured to death with a chain saw for a minor transgression, Johnny decides he's had enough. He's leaving the mob, right now. The only thing in his way is...the rest of the mob.
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW - Did you ever wonder what you were doing here? What your purpose was -- in this life, on this earth, at this moment? You're not alone. Doubt is everywhere. It creeps into the most unlikely places. The most unlikely people. The most unlikely...things. But never fear. There are those who don't have those doubts, those fears, or those feelings of existential angst. In fact, there are those who don't feel anything at all. And tonight, you're going to meet one of them. Isn't that comforting?
Thus DEVILS YOU KNOW. An unlucky number of stories come together to underscore a specific theme: that our devils -- fear and lust, hatred and jealousy, madness and bigotry and wrath and spite -- are part of who we are, but not always our ultimate evils and, in any case, occasionally good for a chuckle or two. If you know me at all, personally or through my work, you know that I believe that while the devil often gains the upper hand in our lives, his victories tend to be fleeting. It's true that darkness is the natural state of the universe, but it's also true -- scientifically true -- that darkness cannot exist in the presence of light.
Well. It's 5:03 PM, a rare-as-a-total-eclipse thunderstorm has just broken over my modest Burbank home, and I'm off to Hollywood to watch a screening of ALIEN RESURRECTION with my friend Mark, who, as it happened, played one of the aliens in the film. It's a strange life we lead, my devils and I... but we wouldn't have it any other way.
Happy birthday, Dad.
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