"More than Once a Year Makes Them Nervous"

Woah. It has a graphic. I'm sort of climbing out of a bad patch, thanks to yesterday's non-productivity, doses of Futurama and Rome, and cracking The Gone Away World (thanks, Nick!). Nothing serious, but there's a few things in my life that are going to change. But this post has to do with the panel. I'll post about my life later.

It's a little nerve-wracking to know that the panel is coming up in less than a week and a half. Must do some brushing-up on Dracula (where is that quote? Is reading from the Unicorn edition a good idea or just bragging?) Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Laurel K. Hamilton, Nancy Collins, Suzy McKee Charnas, a touch of Leonard Wolf, perhaps quote Frank Langella. Peg the dates of Hotel Transylvania and Interview with a Vampire. I think I'll need some notecards. And when did that "Demon Lover" ballad get written down?

But the real question remains; is there anything that humans won't have sex with?

Thrill the World!

Today is Thrill the World day, when thousands of people go out and perform Michael Jackson's Thriller dance, somewhat simultaneously, all around the world. It's an interesting confluence of 80s pop culture, zombie flash mob, and internet organization. This year it's a little strange since Michael is dead.

As for myself, I thrilled the world last week in a different fashion. I finally played my zombies vs. Cthulhu game of Horrorclix. Again appropriate because Horrorclix is currently dead (but dreaming... NECA recently acquired the license). While Cthulhu lost without even eliminating a third of the fielded zombies, it was fun to see some 26 zombies slowly marching on the Great Old One. The Wizkids sculptors made those little zombies very evocative.

Huh

So, I'm speaking on a panel about Paranormal Romance. I'm not sure if I'm more surprised about the engagement itself, or the subject.

Last month's New England Horror Writers newsletter, (the one that has me on the front page) had a note that Colgate bookstore in Hamilton, NY was looking for someone to participate in a panel, tentatively called ""Fangs, Fur and Fey: Perspectives on Paranormal Fiction." They wanted someone who was more of the horror bent than romance. They were having some difficulty getting a horror writer, although the romance folks volunteered quickly.

What's up with that? Horror writers often complain that they aren't getting the exposure we deserve, so why wouldn't they want to get on a panel like this? Is there an undercurrent of elitism in horror?

Their loss is my gain. I sold myself as someone who has read into the roots of paranormal romance, having read Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Laurel K. Hamilton, Nancy Collins, and watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer religiously. I've also read some of Leonard Wolf's literary criticism of horror, so I've got a bit of the analysis to back me up.

So if you want to see me talking horror and romance, I'll be at

the Colgate Bookstore
3 Utica Street, Hamilton, NY. 13346
Saturday, November 7^th. 2 PM

Gods willing, and with a bit of preparation, I won't make an ass of myself.

Watching Movies, the Old-Fashioned Way...

Hathaway's Drive-In in North Hoosick had a end-of the season closer we couldn't resist: Up followed by Star Trek.

We aren't really drive-in people. The heyday of cars and movies was a bit before our time, and we're not really that in love with our car. It's a small, efficient box that gets us from point A to point B. But it's fun to go and see a film in a venue that is past its prime, to get a whiff of the way things used to be.

The intermission video was particularly interesting. The animated bits looked like they came from Jay Ward Productions (of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame). The non-animated parts were also interesting. Mostly, they were an exhortation to visit the snack bar (where the drive-in makes most of its money). Offering hot dogs and burgers was one thing, but watching a 60s-era bag of popcorn get a small pail of butter poured over it was horrifying.

Hathaway's utilizes the two traditional methods of getting the sound to the customer: stands with wired speakers on them (you hang them on your door) and a low-wattage broadcast that can be picked up on the car radio. The speakers are clearly the original material, large aluminum boxes the size an internal DVD drive. We hung it on the steering wheel, it was too chilly to keep the window open. The drive-in is not, incidentally, the best place to see a film with a lot of audio magic. The speaker is mono, so unless your car radio is awesome you're going to lose the audio designed for Dolby Digital or THX.

Fun was had. We cuddled under blankets to keep warm, watched Star Trek for the fourth time on the big screen.

Bottleneck

Well, this kind of sucks. Once again, I have a problem I wanted to have a year ago. My review and rewrite process has run into a bottleneck. I'm writing too fast or something.

I'm polishing several some stories I wrote earlier this year, and I'm bottlenecked by the review process. I've got five stories, all in various positions of revision. The writing group won't meet again until October 13^th. In the meantime, I've got at least three stories I want them to look at. I've also reached a squeeze with the on-line review process. I can only have three stories up, and I've got three stories up. And I need them to look at 'Secret Sisterhood' as soon as I finish polishing it.


Whine, whine, whine. It's difficult to be me.

It's Raining Good Reviews...

Brian Sammons, a good writer who knows Cthulhu from a Cthonian, has posted a review of Cthulhu Unbound at Nanci Kalanta's Horror World.

"I really liked John Goodrich’s The Patriot for many reasons. First and foremost, it is well written and very creepy. Second, it’s a war story, and I love war stories when they’re done right. Third, it’s set in a war mostly forgotten today, World War One. From start to finish, this tale is simply great, but as for that finish, it’s a doozy. While it is tough to pick my absolute favorite of this anthology, this one would be one of the contenders."

Guess who owes Brian and probably Nanci a drink?

A Personal First

I wrote the story I'm threatening to send to William Jones's High Seas Cthulhu II anthology in seven days. That's a personal first, especially considering that there were children in the house for the last two days.

So now it goes through the process of critiques, both on-line and individual. I don't think that the local group will get to it this Tuesday; we're preparing for the Sweating Ink-themed reading on the 17th. Most of the group will want to read their stories to the group before we read to the putative audience at the North Bennington Library.

So now, it's time to polish, polish, polish.

The submission backlog continues apace. Today I send a package out to Asmiov's.

What's Got Two Thumbs and Was Name-Checked by Fangoria's website?

Me.

New Battle Report!

Iren Bear has put together yet another awesome battle report for Youtube. I provide the voices and a few of the special effects, but it's really all him.

And Now the Dreams

Whenever I'm coming off a big pile of stress, I get very vivid dreams I can remember. Most of the time, I sleep soundly, and don't remember my dreams. The week or ten days following something stressful, this changes. So last week was a big one for strange things happening in my sleep.

These aren't anxiety dreams or nightmares, they just seem to be my brain letting off some steam after being put through a wringer. But the nature of them has changed since I noticed this trend twenty years ago. I used to get just flashes of nonsensical scenes mashed together with weird emotional cues. Now I seem to get plots. Not necessarily good plots, but events to definitely chain with each other.

Hm. There's an observation about amateur neurolinguistic programming in there, but I'm not sure what it should be.