THE SWAMP STOMP / Part Three

or “Taking it to the Streets”


Legends linger in the dark places of this earth...







http://www.amazon.com/The-Pines-Rober...

After more than twenty years, The Pines continues to attract new devotees… and new detractors, many of whom still sputter in outrage.

It also still garners sensational reviews. Go figure.

Weird, isn’t it? There’s been a gold-embossed leather-bound volume, a limited-edition hardbound collectors’ edition, mass-market paperback editions, and now “rebranded” paperbacks and ebooks from 47North. (This publisher is also talking about audio books and translations and, since they’re a subsidiary of Amazon, presumably have the resources to make such things happen.) Early on, I created a trailer. If you're curious, you can check it out at http://youtu.be/qjchi9VScG4.

Happily, the bad old days are over. For so many years, I had to advise readers NOT to purchase these books, since no royalties were being paid to authors. (Have I mentioned how much fun it was to work with Leisure Books?) Finally, I can recommend both The Pines and its sequel, The Shore.







http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...

There’s also a trailer for The Shore here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIJsF...

THE PINES centers on Athena Lee Monroe, a displaced person eking out a marginal existence in the New Jersey pine barrens. It also introduces her son Matthew, a boy with a strange affinity for the forest. There’s a presence in those woods, an influence. This remains a key theme, and those elements (and some of the characters) resurface in The Shore, with the setting moved to a desolate beach town on the edge of the woods.



If I feel connected to a specific tradition, it’s that of all those writers who told tales of the ancient, sentient forest. Something lurks in those shadows, something that destroys … or seduces.

I wanted THE SHORE to continue the storyline while staying as far from the tone of the first book as possible. I mean, THE PINES seethes. It’s all steamy summer nights. The emotions are scalding and miserable, and the (frequent) sexual encounters are tawdry. Everyone drips with sweat, and the air roils with insects. Despite the meanness of their situations, some of the characters possess a sort of innate nobility, which has nothing to do with conventional morality. (It’s not the heat, it’s the lucidity.) They redeem themselves. They make sacrifices for love. They grow. And die (some of them). If THE PINES seems to be occurring in an equatorial jungle, THE SHORE may as well take place on a polar icecap. A winter storm menaces a beach town. The people barely speak. They huddle and harbor secrets. And die (some of them).



No vanilla “heroes” here. My people are always more likely to be minorities or outlaws of one type or another. These are the people closest to my heart, my soul, and I believe this continues to cause a substantial amount of the provocation experienced by so many “fans” of the genre. Some people will resist the very notion of diversity with their last breaths.

And so the battle rages on. The novel I’m working on now, the final section of the trilogy – THE STREETS – finds characters from both earlier books struggling in a very urban environment. They won’t give up without a fight either.