The Haunted Weblog

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Halloween Justice – Last Halloween Edward Rivera pushed a ten year old boy down and stole his candy. Authorities in Ohio took a dim view of such meanness, and this Halloween Mr. Rivera must serve his sentence. He is to dress in costume, wear a sign that says he is sorry and will not steal from children again, and pass out candy. I hope the kid he pushed over gets a laugh out of it.
Book 9:37 PM [+]
...

Taking a Firm Stand – Domestic violence is a serious matter. That is why the Namibian parliament is currently debating a bill that would try to prevent this crime in all of its forms. Yesterday they discussed a form of domestic violence that doesn’t usually get enough attention from lawmakers – women using their juju to bewitch their husbands into preternatural flaccidity. Witchcraft as domestic violence. It happened to Darren Stevens, don’t let it happen to you.
Book 9:25 PM [+]
...

Ashes to Ashes? – I’ve always felt a bit odd about that. While it may be chemically correct to say that I am just a handful of ash, I would like to think that I am something more. At the very least I am alive. When I am dead, I will have been formerly alive. My body will then be a treasure chest of organic materials. Pull out my eyes and heart and liver and whatever organs someone may need. I’ll have no further use for them. The rest you can bury, but it seems such a waste to burn me to ash or pump me with toxins and seal me in concrete and steel. These folks have a much better way. No embalming, a simple biodegradable coffin, and burial in a forest. That way I will always live, even after death. I will feed the soil, plants and worms, and thereby re-enter the food chain. Yes, we make great compost, and something about that comforts me. (via: Rebecca's Pocket)
Book 7:01 PM [+]
...

Slow Down! – The Bishop of Malta has declared that reckless driving violates the fifth commandment (thou shalt not kill) because it risks lives. Damn right. In America someone dies due to car-violence every fifteen minutes. Worldwide the statistic is one car-violence death every one minute. Keep this in mind at all times, but especially tonight. Tonight the streets are owned by children. Slow down and watch out for little monsters. If you don’t, the spirits that haunt this weblog will seek you out and shred your soul. I have spoken.
Book 8:38 AM [+]
...

Treats! – Douglas Clegg is scheduled to email the first installment of a new short novel to subscribers to his newsletter tonight. It will be published in book form sometime next year, but those in the know get to read while he is writing it, delivered straight to the inbox. Clegg is one of my favorite authors and his last couple of e-mail serials really kicked, so I’m looking forward to this. What, you don’t subscribe to the free newsletter? Your loss toots.
Book 7:13 AM [+]
...

I Love Halloween, I Love Halloween – It seems that publishers and editors wait until this time of the year to give us all the cool spooky stuff they’ve been saving. A couple of interesting looking books on the history of our favorite holiday have just been published. Salon reviews them here. Salon also seems to love Halloween. They’ve got articles on masks and the Salem Witch Trials too.
Book 11:33 PM [+]
...

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi – I am occasionally struck by the banality of human depravity. While this is not the sort of thing I usually link to, I just think this news story says too much about our species to pass up. A man in Tokyo has been arrested because of what he sold in his store. When a customer entered the store he would meet the store’s female staff. Then the customer would choose a woman, and she would remove her underwear, which he would then purchase. The owner, as I said, was arrested. The charge is selling secondhand clothing without a permit.
Book 11:26 PM [+]
...

Feed Me Seymour – Audrey II isn’t the only nasty plant out there. Check out the frightful flora at San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers. They’ve got plants that smell like corpses, plants that look like vampires, and plants that eat meat that they drown in their own digestive fluids. Lately I’ve noticed some of the local shrubbery has been looking a bit menacing. I wonder if I should worry? (via: Die Puny Humans)
Book 11:15 PM [+]
...

Kitty Litter – If I hadn’t stopped at the store to buy a jug of sand for our furry roommate I would have caught an earlier train and missed all the fun. But no, I got to the station just in time for the whole system to be shut down. A walk, another train, two busses (in traffic), and one more train later, I’m home. They said it was due to a “medical emergency.” I saw a lot of ambulances, some fire-trucks, and some maintenance crews. As I left my last train station of the day I heard someone say “No, they jumped in front of the train.” They? Nothing on any of the local news sites. I’ll probably never know.
Book 12:56 AM [+]
...

War and Peace, Protests and Petitions, Liberals and Liberals – I don’t usually write about current events in this space, but a recent petition drive got me thinking about the anti-war movement.

Yesterday a few thousand people gathered in Washington and other cities around the globe to stage a protest. About a week and a half ago some genre writers got together and started an online petition of writers and artists as their protest. They have gotten just under 200 signatures. There are about a dozen names you might have heard of. By way of comparison, an online petition asking ABC to get Sonny and Brenda back together on "General Hospital" has over 3300 signatures.

The anti-war movement appears to be nothing more than an anti-war fringe group. They have no more chance of success than the Libertarian Party has of taking control of the Senate. This is because the political base of any such movement, mainstream American liberals, are split. Some liberals call for peace (The Nation), some for war (The New Republic, free reg. req.).

Such a split seems, at first, to be inexplicable. Don’t liberals all believe in pretty much the same things? What, after all, is the liberal view on war, peace, justice and freedom?

Today there are two definitions of liberal. I think the split can be traced to the Vietnam War. Before the war the idealized vision of a liberal was someone like Rick from the movie “Casablanca.” He had smuggled guns to the Ethiopians and fought on the loyalist side in Spain. He was a Byronic hero who believed that the peace of the dictator was an oxymoronic concept, and violent struggle in the name of freedom and justice was sometimes necessary. In those days the motto of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty,” was a liberal statement.

Then the war in Vietnam happened and liberals who were used to fighting for freedom and justice began to protest a war in which they saw neither freedom nor justice. The peace movement grew and as it did it redefined the concept of the liberal. The idealized vision of a liberal was someone like Jane Fonda. War was viewed as the ultimate evil and it could never (or almost never) be justified. Peace was an end unto itself and even if it meant that millions of people would never know a day of freedom or justice, at least they would never know war. Liberals petitioned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to change its warmongering motto (it didn’t).

Today’s liberal lives in a post-schism world. The Vietnam influenced liberals believe that backing diplomacy with war preparation is despicable. The old school liberals won’t fight for oil, but do see something worth fighting for in overthrowing despotism in Iraq – an historic opportunity to democratize the Middle East.

The anti-war movement is then a coalition of some mainstream liberals and several fringe political movements. Unless they can convince a clear majority of their fellow liberals that this war is as unjust as Vietnam, it seems unlikely that they will ever be able to have a significant influence on public policy.

Book 8:45 PM [+]
...

Watch Your Radio – If your local public radio station carries Sound and Spirit, tune in this week. Ellen Kushner will be playing music and waxing philosophic about ghosts.
Book 6:26 AM [+]
...

Literary Justice – A few years ago Professor Michael Bellesiles wrote a book about the history of America’s gun culture. Conventional wisdom taught that guns have always been an integral part of this country, the common man’s guarantor of freedom and security from the revolution to the old west and beyond. Bellesiles wanted to show that this was false, that history had been mythologized and that American gun ownership had been historically rare. This would seem hard to prove, but the professor used original sources including legal documents to demonstrate his point. His book was lauded as a breakthrough in historical research, he was embraced by anti-gun activists, and was showered with praise and awards. Which is rather a shame, as it was all a lie. When he couldn’t find the data he needed, he just made it up. Yesterday he “resigned” his position at Emory University (read: left before they kicked his lying ass out of there). If there is one thing we hate here in The Haunted Bookloft, it is fiction that is labeled as non-fiction. We’ve been waiting for this prevaricating professor to get his just desserts, and now he has.
Book 9:38 PM [+]
...

Halloween Reading – I just started reading October Dreams, an anthology celebrating Halloween. I’m not usually excited by theme anthologies, but how can you miss with this? Most of the top names in spooky fiction contributed either a story or an essay. So far it is first rate.
Book 10:23 PM [+]
...

Rollin’ on the River – I once heard Christopher Golden say that although his books are usually labeled horror, he hasn’t considered them as really in the genre until The Ferryman. That may be something of an exaggeration, especially considering the intensity of some of his vampire novels, but it is certainly true that this is his most traditional horror novel yet. The eponymous character is Charon, a figure from Greek mythology. One day, while on his regular route, shuttling the newly dead over the river into the afterlife, he meets Janine. Janine has just died in the delivery room. She has made some bad decisions recently and might be expected to welcome the ride. But she does something no one has ever done before. She defies the Ferryman. Back to the world of the living with her, and unfortunately the intrigued Charon follows.

Janine, her lover David, and her best friend Annette find their lives made a hell as the Ferryman eliminates anyone who might rival him for her affections. They are faced with the shades of dead friends and dead enemies. Confused and frightened, they slowly begin to realize the power of what they are up against.

It is said that the more fantastic the story, the more real the characters and setting need to be. The characters are done very well here. In a few pages you feel you know them and care about them. I once heard someone ask Mr. Golden how he is able to create such believable female characters. He explained that he had been raised without much of a fatherly presence in the home, but was always surrounded by strong women. That may be, as his women are strong and believable, but I’m not sure how it explains the highly charged lesbian erotica that plays a small but powerful part in the story. If I should see him again, I think I’ll keep that question to myself.

As to setting, it could not be more believable for me. Much of the action takes place about a mile and a half from where I am sitting. The characters ride the same train I do. One of the murders takes place in the parking lot of my favorite hardware store. If you are wondering if he got the local color of the Boston area right, take it from me – he did.

The spooky parts are right on also. His use of the dead as catspaws is an excellent variation of the standard ghost story, and his Charon is great scary monster. The supernatural elements deliver the required chills and action, but also force the characters to confront themselves, their needs, regrets, guilts, strengths, weaknesses, and faith. I sometimes think that only in the fiction of the supernatural can a writer be free to explore the essential truths of our souls. Golden takes full advantage of the opportunity to explore. While he is in not much of a literary stylist, and the occasional sentence slips into cliché, Christopher Golden writes solid prose and tells a damn fine story.

Book 10:15 PM [+]
...

Putting the Fun in Funeral – Undertakers in Holland has come up with a way to help break the tension at funerals. They hire a clown! A clown who can fart loudly. What a great idea. I imagine that at the funeral of a really important person they would have several clowns, who would all come out of one surprisingly small hearse.
Book 8:58 PM [+]
...

R.I.P. – News has reached The Haunted Weblog that fearless vampire researcher Dr. Raymond McNally has passed on. Dr. McNally was best known for inventing the notion, along with Radu Florescu, that Bram Stoker based Dracula on the life of Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes. Today most people have come to accept this theory even though it is most certainly batshit.
Book 9:54 PM [+]
...

Worth a Thousand Words – A couple of photos that made the news caught my eye. First up is this new direction in fashion. It has a retro look that is VERY VERY WRONG. Then this one that makes me want to save the earth. I love nature.
Book 7:47 AM [+]
...

There’s Just Something About Romania – It seems this kind of story comes out of that country every couple of days. As you may recall, a famous Romanian named Dracula used to drag a box of local cemetery dirt around with him to reinforce his Posturepedic. A few years ago workers built roads in the town of Deva using local cemetery dirt. Why would they do this? Because it is Romania. Since then folks have noticed that there have been a lot of accidents on these roads. Do they put up new street signs? No, they put up huge wooden crosses to ward off the angry spirits. Romania. I love that place.
Book 7:38 AM [+]
...

The Ghost of Great Zimbabwe – The first sightings were reported about four years ago. Tourists viewing the ancient ruins in Zimbabwe told of a ghost – a weird specter who would terrorize them, then take their goods and money. Some theorized that the creature was a spirit of the monuments themselves, angered at the visiting foreigners. Police theorized that he was a naked guy who had smeared himself with grease and ash. Now he is in jail.
Book 11:21 PM [+]
...

Scientific Breakthrough! – We truly live in an age of miracles and wonder. Novi Sad University in Serbia has developed the broomstick test to determine if your fiancé is a witch. This new test replaces the older, somewhat unreliable duck weighing technique.
Book 10:46 PM [+]
...

"I had no idea we'd been living on top of the dead for half a century." – A family in Transylvania is a little creeped out by the discovery of over 2000 skeletons under their floorboards. I suppose if you found out that your sub-basement was a medieval ossuary for bones that are about a millennium old, you might be forgiven for thinking that there might be some bad mojo working there.
Book 10:34 PM [+]
...

Inspiration For Writers of Horror Stories – As news, this is a little stale, but I just can’t pass it up. Just mix together a strange Afro-Cuban religion, a cauldron full of bones, and a little grave robbing. With ingredients like that, how can it miss?
Book 10:13 PM [+]
...

Truth, Through the Lens of Fiction – I love a good ghost story. I enjoy demons and monsters and things from another world. I love all that scary stuff, because frankly, it isn’t all that scary. It can be pretty exciting, but it is hard to be afraid of impossible things. The terrors in Jack Ketchum’s The Lost are not impossible. The only real monster I’ve ever been afraid of are people.

Ray Pye is the monster in this book. He is intelligent, self-centered, good-looking, possessed of a violent temper, and in the first few pages of the book he kills a couple of young women because he wants to know if he can. Ketchum was probably inspired by a similar murder in 1996, in which two young women were gunned down by a man who thought they might be lesbians.

This is why The Lost is such a disturbing book. Evil like this really happens. People like this walk among us every day. You could know a Ray Pye. Perhaps you worked with him, hung out with him, even slept with him. Perhaps you knew there was something a little strange about him, perhaps even dangerous. Perhaps you just thought of it as charisma.

Ketchum writes characters you believe. They have real problems, real fears, real flaws, and real relationships. The book is set four years after the murders, and most of the it is spent exploring the lives of these characters in the aftermath of the murders. Ray, his friends, the cops who investigated the case, people they love, the living and the dead. The viewpoint switches every few pages from character to character, which at first was a bit confusing, but weaves a complex web of character relations and give the reader a deeper understanding of them as people. If you were to read just a hundred pages out of the middle you would not think of this a being “horror.” You might think it could be categorized as suspense, because danger seems to be in the air. There is a feeling of menace about Ray, a potential for terror that you can feel.

Readers who cannot stand graphic descriptions of violence should stay away, as the beginning and end of this book are extremely intense, and very disturbing. They are all the more disturbing at the conclusion because we have gotten to know these characters and to care about them. This is powerful stuff, psychological horror that tells the truth. You should read this. If you think you can handle it.

Book 3:39 PM [+]
...

What an Entrance! – A guy shows up at a funeral drunk. That would normally be a faux pas, but since it was his own funeral I guess it is acceptable. Actually, I’ve wanted to do this ever since I read about Tom and Huck.
Book 6:19 PM [+]
...

Cancelled Czechs – I’ve always enjoyed walking in cemeteries. It is like walking back in time, seeing the names and dates and admiring the funerary art. Last week Cara Mia and I took a stroll through a small cemetery that had memorials from the 17th through 19th centuries. Nathaniel Hawthorne had relatives there and took some of the names from the stones to use in his fiction. I’m not much of a traveler, so I always like to find virtual graveyards. Here is a nice little one in Prague. Here is your chance to see the grave of the man who gave robots to the world.
Book 5:57 PM [+]
...

Atlantis Found? – Sonar experts mapping the ocean floor in Cuban waters have found an area of eight square miles that looks like fragments of a city. They have charted square and pyramid shapes that they say could not be natural. Is this the fabled lost city? Probably not, but the possibility that it might be a lost city is certainly intriguing
Book 9:46 PM [+]
...

Discover This – Oh that rotten Columbus. Before he came to these shores the American continents were a paradise. Peaceful noble native peoples, living in harmony with the land and each other, and great civilizations with learning, art, architecture and universal brotherhood. War, slavery, and genocide were unknown until Columbus brought them. I guess that’s why these people are protesting. I’m pleased to note that Aztec dancers performed to sanctify the event. It is unfortunately unlikely that the blessing took hold, because all Aztec ceremonies need a human sacrifice to be official. Sadly, the oppressive regime of Columbus brought that to an end. By coincidence there have been a couple of remarkable archeological finds recently that sheds new light on pre-Columbian America. An Inca burial site has been found at Machu Picchu. This is the biggest find up there in almost a century. Another find in Peru is of even greater antiquity. It is a discovery that tells us more about the Chimu people. We know little about them because they were defeated and wiped off the face of the earth by the Incas a few decades before Columbus first brought evil to these shores. What we do know about the Chimu is that they also practiced human sacrifice. In fact, the recent discovery is the largest find of human sacrifices in continental history.

Alright, I’m laying it on a bit thick here, but I have a point. About 500 years ago a bunch of evil people came to these shores and defeated a bunch of evil people. Get over it. Wherever man exists is there is inhumanity to man. There is also absurdity. Get a load of this archeological debate over who really has the bones of Christopher Columbus.

Book 9:38 PM [+]
...

Dark, Darker – John Pelan is one of the world’s foremost authorities on weird fiction. His expertise in 20th century horror is indisputable. He has also established no small reputation as an editor and writer of new fiction. His new anthology, The Darker Side, is a follow up to Darkside (now out of print) from just four years ago. This book has 27 stories by some of the best writers in the business. High points include Edo van Belkom, who starts it off with “Do You See What I Fear?,” a fine story about a woman who begins to see the world differently after her brain surgery. Simon Clark’s “Demon Me” is a different take on the idea of having personal demons. Seth Lindberg tells us about a man who is supposed to be able to raise the dead in “Spirits of the Flesh.” Tom Piccirilli’s “The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair” is one of the best stories in the book. It features a new take on the concept of the soul eater. “The Lamb” by Paul Finch is a very good story about a young seminarian who is tempted on and under the streets of Rome. “The Mannerly Man” by Mehitobel Wilson is a terrific piece of science-fiction horror about a future in which the law has been changed so that each person has a right to one murder. Wilson’s descriptions of the changes wrought on society are in the best traditions of both genres. “The Origin” is told by David B. Silva in backward fashion. It starts by recounting the first murder committed by a young man who would go on to become a serial killer. After that we go back in time, little by little, watching the progression of the future fiend. It is a clever idea, executed well. John Pelan takes the risk of buying one of his own stories. It pays off with “Armies of the Night,” a story about a retired man who put his heart and soul into his hobby. “Unspeakable” by Lucy Taylor is one of those stories that anyone who tries to write is instantly jealous of. The original idea is brilliant and the story uses it more brilliantly still. “The Whirling Man” by David Niall Wilson is about the power of art and the pain of the artist. It is also powerful writing. Shikhar Dixit’s “Asian Gothic” is just that, an Indian horror unlike most of what I’ve read before. Tim Lebbon caps it all with “Hell Came Down.” It is about a wizard looking for his wayward, insane student. It is an excellent piece of dark fiction.

This is a very good anthology. Some of the stories will probably be seen again in “best of” anthologies and will be mentioned when awards are passed out. A few were merely OK, and only a couple disappointed. If you are looking for good short fiction, this one is worth picking up.

Book 9:08 PM [+]
...

Yes, But Is It Art? – When acclaimed artist Robert Lenkiewicz died they found something unusual in his studio. In a large drawer was discovered the embalmed body of Edwin “Diogenes” MacKenzie, a tramp and frequent model for the artist. Lenkiewicz had befriended Diogenes years earlier, and when the old boy passed on the artist was the closest thing he had to family. He took charge of the body and, it seems, had him preserved. That was twenty years ago. The question is what is to be done with the body now? Should the state bury him, should he be turned over to the Lenkiewicz family, or should he be put in a museum. Has Diogenes undergone a grand metamorphosis, from artist’s model to art?
Book 9:56 PM [+]
...

New Classic Bradbury – Many people think of Ray Bradbury as a science fiction writer. While he did write some of the genre’s classics, more of his work has been in the horror field. His recent novel, From the Dust Returned, can be categorized as horror, but it is very gentle horror indeed. This is the lightest work of dark fiction I’ve ever read, and one of the most beautiful.

In 1945 Bradbury began writing about the Elliott family of October Country in the American heartland. You could think of them as the original Addams family, made up of every monster you’ve ever heard of, and a few only Ray Bradbury could dream up. In the first Elliott story he wrote, “Homecoming,” the whole extended family converges on the great haunted house. It is a wonderful introduction to the clan and forms the lynchpin of this novel.

This is a “fix-up,” a novel cobbled together out of several previously published short stories. Bradbury is a master cobbler, having done this sort of thing before with books like The Illustrated Man. The addition of several new stories bring the work together and create a narrative that ties up loose ends and make the work a cohesive whole. The framing device is in the person of Timothy, the one member of the family who is perfectly normal and mortal. As family matriarch Thousand-Times Great Grandmère, a 4000 year old mummy, tells him, he was “left at the door in a basket with Shakespeare for footprop and Poe’s Usher as pillow. With a note pinned to your blouse: HISTORIAN.” Timothy is charged with writing it all down, recording the house and the stories of the various members of the family. These would include Cecy, who sleeps in the attic and lives in the minds of anyone or anything she chooses. It would also include Uncle Einar, a wonder fellow who flies about on his great black wings.

While the narrative adds to the book, it is the vignettes that you remember. The small stories, the amazing characters, the wonderful ideas. I’ll never forget the image of Uncle Einar playing with the children, of Cecy falling in love, or of the three bodiless cousins living on in the memories of an ancient mummy. It is the shear beauty of the language that holds you. Bradbury has not lost any of his powers in the 55 years that it took him to write this book. Some of the passages that were recently written are as breathtaking as bits in chapters that are generally considered to be classic stories. The heart of this book is the love the writer clearly has for his odd family. It is the pitchfork wielding villagers that Bradbury despises, it the magical, weird and special that inspire his poetry. This is a wonderful book, a perfect little Halloween treat, destined to be another classic from the master.

Book 9:26 PM [+]
...

I Smell Sainthood – Workers fixing up a church in Romania accidentally dug up a priest who had been buried there in the 19th century, and he was looking pretty good. More important than his perfectly preserved body was the fact he was smelling like a rose. This is said to mean that his corpse has been visited by Jesus. I wasn’t previously aware of the fact that the Messiah likes to visit with corpses, but why not? After all, who doesn’t love a mummified rose-scented dead priest?
Book 10:29 PM [+]
...

One Morning K. Woke To Discover That He Was a Patient – I’ve always been afraid of hospitals. They seem like big impersonal buildings where you are treated more like a machine than a human being. You are a thing to be repaired, and like any thing you can be reduced to data and misfiled. I have always know that this is an irrational fear. Hospitals are run by competent compassionate people, they are not Kafkaesque hells in which you will be trapped forever. Then I read this: “Questions are being asked at the Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris where a plumber working in the basement last week came across a decomposed corpse wearing hospital pajamas.” Perhaps most chilling of all is this quote from a staff member: “We lose about six or seven patients a year.” My guess – he filled out his insurance paperwork incorrectly.
Book 10:07 PM [+]
...

Haunting Images – Dave Dobbs over at TryTry said that I would love this site. That guy can read me like a book. Abandoned Places is visually beautiful, and the photographs create a mood and suggest stories yet to be told. If you are looking for a little melancholy inspiration, go thou and explore.
Book 9:15 PM [+]
...

Survivor, Laymon Style – If you know Richard Laymon, you know what that means. Island has all the Laymon trademarks, murder, mayhem, rape, sadomasochism, adolescent sexual fantasy, strong women, caged women, good women, bad women, naked women, horror, suspense, some more sadomasochism, and a little torture. Like any Laymon novel it is also well written, with straightforward muscular prose and pacing that keeps you turning the pages. The novel is presented as the journal of Rupert Conway, a college student and aspiring writer. Like most young men Rupert is obsessed with women. Since he is a young man in a Laymon novel he is obsessed with women. He closely observes all the women around him and describes their bodies in lascivious detail.

The action starts on page one when a boat explodes. Rupert is on vacation with his girlfriend and her family. Now they are stranded on an island, which is bad enough, but then the men start getting killed off one by one. Rupert knows he is next, but can’t help reflecting on how cool it is to be the only man on an island with beautiful women who lost most of their clothes in an explosion. He’s just that kind of guy.

About halfway through the book you’ve got a pretty decent suspense story, with the occasional horrific element. Then something happens and the book takes a darker turn. Unfortunately what happens is an example of the “idiot plot.” This is a device whereby a character does something completely stupid and out of character so as to move the story along. Rupert is our goat here, and while he is a mostly mature if puerile young man, he has been shown to be anything but stupid, so his authorially mandated idiocy is annoying at best.

Nevertheless, it is at this point the book moves into the kinky horror zone. We learn the real reason behind the mayhem and enter a dark, violent and sexually twisted world. We learn that Rupert’s morality is more malleable than even he thought. We learn that some women get excited by being caged, and that some men prefer that too. Mostly we learn that just about everybody in a Laymon novel has an aspect to their psyche that they don’t want the world to know about.

For the second time I have a problem with a Richard Laymon novel. As when I reviewed In the Dark I liked the action and the powerful writing, but hated the characters. Their ability to do stupid things to move the plot along and their lack of an internal moral compass, relying on the fear of disapprobation as a determinant of right and wrong, left me wanting more. In my horror I prefer characters with more human depth and situations that do not feel artificial. On the other hand I cannot say that this wasn’t a good read. Laymon was one heck of a writer and could sometimes pick up a reader and throw him right into his plot. Bottom line: if all the nastiness I’ve described turns you on, then you cannot miss this novel. If it doesn’t particularly thrill you, then it is still not bad. If just reading this review makes you queasy, then give this book a wide berth.

Book 9:07 PM [+]
...

Treats! – Paula Guran of DarkEcho and Horror Garage has given us early Halloween treats: a free e-book in PDF format. It is a short anthology of classic spooky stories. It has Poe, Saki, M.R. James and more, and includes original notes and illustrations by Ms. Guran. Great old fiction, and you can’t beat the price.
Book 10:53 PM [+]
...

How Could I Forget? – I mentioned I went to the fair the other day, but I forgot to mention the world record. The biggest pumpkin ever was weighed in at 1337.6 pounds. Boy, that would make a heck of a Jack-O-Lantern.
Book 10:32 PM [+]
...

Roll Those Dice – Did you know that your odds of being killed by a venomous snake are 1 in 508,139? You have a much better chance of being stabbed to death at 1 in 1,893. If you are worried about lightning, you should know that 1 in 55,578 is pretty good. So go on, live a little. Put a cobra in your golf bag and hit the links during a thunderstorm with your favorite knife wielding maniac. Check out the latest line on your demise. Thanks to TryTry for the link.
Book 10:22 PM [+]
...

This Old Funhouse – Now here are some people who are on the side of the dark angels. People who preserve and restore that quaint old American tradition, the darkride.
Book 6:59 PM [+]
...

Free Trade Now! – More about Halloween. Protectionists are trying to add big import duties on Halloween costumes. Prices next year could be as much as 50% greater. May the Great Pumpkin squash these Halloween-Grinches like the bugs they are.
Book 6:55 PM [+]
...

Further Evidence of the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization – The latest trend in brewing is alcohol-free beer. Oh the horror. How can that most revered of artists, the brewmaster, so degrade his noble profession? Why must we be forced to contemplate such things in this sacred month of October? As I write this I am quaffing The Oktoberfest beer, Spaten Ur-Märzen. While I am thankful such things are still available, I quiver at the thought of what the next beer-like obscenity will be. Barley-free beer? Hops-free beer (actually Keystone Lite is pretty damn close)? Why don’t they just brew very low quality beer, filter all the flavor and color out of it, add an artificial flavor like lemon, and see if they can sell it to adolescents and fools? Oh, wait.
Book 6:50 PM [+]
...

Buy More Pumpkins! – Marketing gurus expect sales of Halloween merchandise to be down this year. Is America not going to celebrate its greatest holiday? Are we going to give it a miss? Never! Do your part for the economy. Buy candy! Buy a costume! Get yourself a pumpkin! Decorate the house! Buy some goofy looking “scary” tchotchkes! You will be happier. Your country will be stronger. And you will have earned the undying gratitude of The Haunted Weblog and Halloween lovers everywhere.
Book 6:11 PM [+]
...

Peace In Our Time – I was a political science major in college. While I still have reasoned opinions and strong feelings for certain points of view, I don’t spend as much time involved with public discourse as I once did. It is not that my interest in the subject has waned. It is that if you spend a lot of time involved in the issues of the day, you end up spending way too much time hanging around with activists. I present this image as a portrait of the anti-war movement, not so much as political commentary but as part of my continuing devotion to presenting the grotesque and the arabesque.
Book 5:52 PM [+]
...

I Went To the Animal Fair – The birds and the bees were there. Really. Cara Mia, my dad, and I went to our local agricultural fair today. A master falconer put on a remarkable demonstration with some beautiful birds of prey. At one point she let a couple of her birds fly up and out of site. When they decided to come back they dove over our heads at a speed that was hard to comprehend. You read about the speed of these hunters, and you see them on TV, but until you actually see them in action you have no idea how amazing their combination of swiftness and grace is. And yes, the beekeepers had a demonstration, and it was just as interesting as you might expect. We saw cows and pigs and sheep. Gigantic Clydesdales put on a demonstration (more impressive than you might imagine) and the RCMP put on a show of their horsemanship. It may not be everybody’s idea of a thrilling time, but we thought it was a heck of a show. Top it all off with hot dogs, cheeseburger and Boston baked beans from the Congregationalists, as well as onion rings, fried dough, locally produced maple candy, and apple crisp with ice cream, and we’re feeling a bit full. Dad is getting on in years, and I was afraid all our traipsing about might be too much for him, but Cara Mia and I conked out long before he did. Nice way to spend the afternoon. It occurs to me that if you haven’t been to a fair, you haven’t really seen America. Either that or I just really like fried dough (with butter and cinnamon and powdered sugar . . . ohhh).
Book 5:36 PM [+]
...

Outrageous! – Beer treated as if it were a bad thing instead of the healthful source of joy that it is. The most responsible people in town, people who volunteer to protect the lives of others, who work long hours at great personal risk for no pay, treated like children! I curse the insurance companies of America. Civilization itself is at risk from its most insidious foes, the suits and the bean counters.
Book 11:03 PM [+]
...

Alas, poor Yorick – A museum gift shop in England accidentally sold a real human skull. Guess where I’m doing my Christmas shopping?
Book 10:44 PM [+]
...

Probe Me! Probe Me! – A researcher in Canada has opined that alien abduction is a pleasant experience for most abductees. I would have thought that only about one in ten would enjoy the ride.
Book 10:39 PM [+]
...

Will Nothing Kill This Monster? – This damned story keeps rising from the grave. Developers in Romania want to destroy a genuine medieval village to build a Dracula theme-park that looks like a genuine Hollywood-style medieval castle. That way they can attract folks who look like the guy pictured in the article. Good plan.
Book 10:32 PM [+]
...

When Is a Book Not a Book – When it is an ebook. Purity by Douglas Clegg is a novella that until recently was available as a free download from the author’s website. It had previously been published as a book by Cemetery Dance. It is a portrait of a sociopath as a young man on a small New England Island. Owen is one of the locals in a damp old town that relies on fishing and summer tourists. Relentless in his pursuit of self-improvement, he feels he can achieve anything he puts his mind to through his devotion to breathing exercises, concentration, and the worship of a small idol he found as a boy, Dagon. That tip of the authorial hat to Lovecraft tells us that there is something a wrong, even evil, about Owen. This is, however, not a Lovecraftian supernatural horror, but a story about love and madness. Since he was a little boy Owen has been in love with Jenna, one of the wealthy summer people. He looks forward to her arrival every year, but one summer she shows up with her new boyfriend. Jimmy is rich, handsome, athletic, and in the way. This is a story of psychological manipulation, evil, and love (or obsession confusing itself for love). Owen Crites is a remarkable character, one that will haunt you for some time.
Book 6:06 PM [+]
...

Every Day and Every Way, I'm Feeling Better and Better -- Infirmities of the flesh have kept me down for a little while, but this interregnum is over. I have risen and walk the Earth again. Thought you’d like to know.
Book 6:00 PM [+]
...