Occupy The Dark! (Purchasing info!)

Ladies and Gentlemen; Maniacs, Misfits and Malcontents; Animal Lovers, Pizza Twirlers and Headbangers; Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and just those passing through...lend me your ears.

More so, lend me your eyes and your minds.

The first stage of ordering info is ready.

A recap:

Twelve teaser blogs up: you can scroll through the last twelve blogs to catch up on samples and such from the stories in my collection, The Dark is Light Enough for Me.  After doing that, perhaps you'd like to read more, get into the sordid details, the dark designs, the deviant excursions.

Well, as I type this, my publisher has sent the info to a handful of sellers and, surprisingly, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk already have it ready to roll!  According to my publisher, Ampichellis Ebooks, they expected the other sellers to have it posted first. Oh, and as I type this, OmniLit has it posted as well.  Good!

We got The Dark flowing now...

So, yeah, it's time!  Here's the info for purchasing the collection from:
Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Light-Enough-Me-ebook/dp/B0065M28L6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320955068&sr=8-1

and for my friends across the pond in the UK, here's your link: 
Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Light-Enough-Me-ebook/dp/B0065M28L6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320958608&sr=8-1

Of note, my girlfriend said she could not order the book through Amazon.co.uk, and she lives in Italy, which seems odd.  (Um, yes, she ordered it before going to bed a few hours ago...) She ordered it from Amazon.com.  So, either way, it's available via Amazon worldwide, check em out and I'm sure one will work for you.

And here's the OmniLit link as well:
http://www.omnilit.com/product-thedarkislightenoughforme-638242-238.html



So, please join me, take my hand and we'll...

Occupy The Dark!

The Dark is Light Enough for Me.

How about you?

    

Teaser #12: “Things That Crawl…In Hollywood.”

(I originally wrote, Teaser #9.  Perhaps I don't want these teaser blogs to end, they've been fun.)

I write a wide variety of dark, speculative fiction.  Most often it is horror, though for the novels I see a strong magic realism quality; this was not planned out, it just happened that way, even if the magic realism is branded with horror or, at least, major mindfuck (excuse me) psychological tendencies…with a nod to the supernatural as well.  (Oh, wait until the novels get published, especially, The Wilderness Within.  You want to be taken for a real ride? That one builds and builds and then—Crack!  All bets are off and…where was I? Better jump out of this parenthetical aside and get back to the point…) Every now and then, it’s simply a story that decides to go off the rails and, as Mick Jagger might put it, PAINT ITself with BLACK humor.  Still horror, but the tone is laced with absurdity. 

Man, perhaps I shouldn’t be doing this blog.  I think my brain is leaning toward those tendencies as I type it right now! 

[Straightens self in chair, shakes head, squiggly lil’ imps fall out of his ear and onto his shoulder; brushes them off, much to their dismay, and continues…]

“Things That Crawl…In Hollywood,” is one such story.  I have no idea where they come from, but they sure do come…I think they’re coming for me.  Damn, am I almost quoting Ted Nugent now?  What the…  Yeah, anything goes, with all of my fiction; but when it gets loopy, well…

I have a great distaste for celebrity, false idols and such, and those who follow blindly, as if their words are law.  I also have a fascination with anatomical horror, body horror, because I know when using the body within fiction, people can relate on a deeper level.  If one gets one’s eyelids duct-taped open and a beetle crawls slowly across the naked eye, well…yeah, that reaction, the one you just had.  See, you can sense it; you can relate.      

Mixing these two subjects promises a perverse union, what with the narcissistic, plastic surgery, ego inflating vanity of said celebrities.  And with the celebrities all falling apart, piece by piece…

And the pieces aren’t exactly…dead.

Okay, I’ve said too much but once in a while you get that, so there!  Here, now, I’ll drop this sample on you as we join devious TV producer, Merrill Thatcher, and second-hand celebrity in need of a career boost, Josh Brance, as they discuss the show they are to film:

***

     “So…we’re looking for…Things That Crawl…?”

     “In Hollywood!  Don’t forget the tagline.”

     “Body parts?”

     “Well, yes, body parts.  Kind of…”

     Before Brande could delineate further info—more to give his confusion density, not really furnishing a finer understanding—Thatcher put the handle of the wheel bound cage in Brande’s sweaty free palm.  He had his own odds ’n’ ends accoutrements to deal with, what with a net, taser, Bowie knife, and his own .44 Magnum.

     Then, Brande’s bewilderment nudged through the haze:  “Body parts? Kind of?”

     “Yes and no.  Has something to do with environmental and geological oddities—EGO, as the rags like to humorously call them.  Something about how, after The Big One hit L.A. six months ago, having split deep into the earth and released heretofore unknown airborne elements—gases and toxins—a breakdown had ensued.  Seems those who had undergone plastic surgery of any sort, be it face-lifts, breast implants, Botox, collagen, you name it, anything unnaturally altered, because of the chemicals or process itself—nobody really knows—well, the tainted parts began to mutate, take on a life of their own and—”

     “Fall off?!”

     Thatcher hesitated, a wry grin addressing his lips—all absurdities confirmed—the North and South poles of his thick, bulldog-like head bobbing in concurrence. 

     “So the object is to—what?”

     “Our initiative is to capture and catalogue.”

     Brande’s eyes narrowed.  “Catalogue what”

     You are as dumb as a sock puppet, thought Thatcher.  “The body parts we capture.”  Thatcher smiled, bit off the end of a cigar and knelt down to strike a match against the pavement.  “The celebrity body parts we capture.”

***

And away we go! 

There’s a sequence later in this story, when we find out the true reason why Brande has been asked along for this venture that contains one of my favorite lines in any or my stories.  Add to that some love--yes, this is a love story, of sorts, and as I like to say, all bets are off.  Did I mention the multiple layers within the fiction I write at some point in these teasers?  Yeah, I’m sure I did.  

So, that’s the last of the teasers.  Twelve stories, quite varied, overlapping themes, sequenced with intent…I'll now take a deep breath, let out a heavy sigh, and realize as I type these words, there’s less than two days until the release of my first collection.  I hope you enjoy the collection when it's released 11-11-11--yes, I'll post a blog with the purchasing info in a day or so, as well as post purchasing info on all of the pertinent social networking sites and what-not.   

The Dark is Light Enough for Me.   

Are you ready?

Take my hand, I'll lead the way...

This fantastic art by Chris Mars seems appropriate, reveling in a similar essence.  Well, look, it works for me and you can tell me yes or no once you get to read the story in a couple days.  ;-)

Teaser #10: “Plastic.”

Our humble narrator asks of himself, amidst a situation where revelations loom ever nearer: “What did I truly hold closest to my soul?”

Revelations.  There’s a lot of those in my stories.  That just came to me.

Another question, the answers sifting through the mental fog: “What one aspiration defined me above all other aspirations?”

And another: “What motivated me in ways I had forgotten, yet now knew were on a horizon, somehow on a horizon?” 

And then he sees the light at the end of the philosophical tunnel, not an exit bringing simple answers.  Not a train to bulldoze over him.  Not anything expected, yet so clear once it hits him.  A revelation wrapped in the guise of an epiphany.

The truth, no matter the price to be paid.

“Plastic” is one of those organic writing rides, no real idea where it was going to go when I started it, an oblique starting point that mutates into something special.  We follow our loser narrator as he attempts to get a hold of his so far mislead life.  But what’s wrought in the bones often comes back to sway even the best intentions.  He gets a job at a Genesis Plastics, with promises of big money to help him hasten his excursion out of the drab town he's lived in his whole life, but the work is strange, just as the place; and his superior, Nilfren.  Other elements add to his mounting breakdown, coming together to nudge the old ways out of hiding, where drink and women derailed everything.

But his derailment, in one of my favorite sections I've ever written (chapter 5), does not prove to be permanent, because what happens in the final chapter (6), takes him to such unexpected places even the reader may find wonder in the final…revelations. 

Here’s a sample from chapter 5, where our unnamed narrator has stumbled hard and he heads back home to a woman who might make sense, a woman he met at work—Kris—yet within the breakdown, he’s cognizant of things within himself changing.  Something is definitely in motion.

***

     Head clearing, I realize I might be destined to slink through life on the edge of living it right, maybe never getting out of this place. I
’ll tell myself the lie and set up the goals and maybe, just maybe, I will get out, but that’s now something I realize might never happen, and until about a week ago, I was dead set and seeing it as viable, the way, the only way, something to live for and...

     Kris at the apartment door, sad doe-eyed look and I hug her hard and wonder what am I doing and hug her more and I cry, breaking down differently now, crying and wondering if all that matters in this life are little moments like this, where somebody cares and you get to care back and then we are in bed and she’s taking me inside her and it feels like something I could deal with for awhile. Maybe. Maybe not. And I am coming and she is screaming and it’s a mess of sounds that slash like daggers back at us, digging into my flesh and I ache, a strange ache, and I wonder what the hell is going on and I see myself in the mirror afterwards and something is wrong...

     Something that has nothing to do with drinking or falling down and getting up, brushing off the failure; something real, something within. I look different in ways I cannot describe. I see this in my stance, feel it in the way my bones ache, know it as one knows their very body that something is happening.

     The word escalation seeps into my thoughts.

     The word, as I have associated with work—the mindless drudgery of that place—and I realize something had been escalating, but now it seemed to pause.

     Shifting to me?

***

Though this one is not horror, per se, it most definitely deals in fantastical dimensions being crossed—Stop!  Don't give any more away, man!  See, there is always so much more to the stories than what they seem to be about, though in every one there is something we can all hold on to, that gist of humanity, our link from the world we know, and the strange worlds jitterbugging just to the left of ours.  Trust me (again), when you get to the revelations here, I hope you smile gleefully as the right choices are made.  Really, they are, no matter where these right choices lead our narrator…

Next up, we meet Trane, a man who’s chosen to hit bottom.  Something meeting up with a fantasy woman helps him achieve…

Bart Simpson melting a green plastic army man.  The narrator of "Plastic" can relate... (Yes, there IS a reference to melting green army men.  Twice.)

Teaser #9: “The Perceptive One.”

The original version of this story was written about 20 years ago.  It was 3,100 words long and was called, “A Torrent of Ages.”  Yeah, okay, I liked that title, but it sometimes confused the editors of the magazines I sent it out to.  I got my first rejection from this story, from Kristine Kathryn Rusch at Pulphouse.  At least she was kind in her words.

A few more rejections and a chunk of years locked into Music Journalism, time-warp to early 2006. I’d just completed my first novel during a furious rush at the end of 2005 (though it must be noted, a major revision happened earlier this year, one that really brought out an undercurrent of "something wrong"), and I still felt like writing something long, something with room to breathe, and I was going through old work, pieces of this and that, when I came across a printed out version of “Torrent...”  Reading it, I knew the idea was good, but it was lacking…something.  It needed something else.  It needed another character.  Hence, my introduction to Peg Saunders.

She was a character fully developed almost immediately; she was already there, ready to take the reins.  Her voice came so easy, her pain and deep understanding of people and the world around her, simple, direct.  Her reflective tone and perceptions added real depth as she looked back on incidents that changed not just her world, but that of a passing lover who was more than that: Travis Wayne.

Travis was all ego and strut.  He had goals he had no idea how to attain, but he didn’t care.  He expected much because of that ego and the evil undercurrent that prods such a monstrous outlook. 

What he got was what only such a corrupt soul could get: his just rewards.

But it doesn’t stop with that.  Because of Peg Saunders.  A woman you will come to care for, and you’ll feel her pain.

Here’s the beginning, to give you a taste of Peg’s voice, and a hint that her tale is not one filled with joy.

***  

     I wrote this about Travis early in our relationship, a bit rough and poetic, but I think it captured the essence of who he once was:  “Lean, mean, quite obscene; tougher than a stick of beef jerky and cruder than a stiff breeze from the slaughterhouse.  Wheat-blond hair and the bluest eyes imaginable, like the sky had been polished and placed in his care; like the color of summer on a liquid glass ocean…” 

     My Travis.

     I loved him then and love him still.  But it’s different now, this love we have.  I have.  I don’t believe Travis loves anything at this point.  But that was partly the fault of his ego and the devious designs wrought by that ego that led him to the place he is in now.

     The rest of it was destiny, something I used to not believe in, but now it is all I know. 

     But I’m moving much too fast and there’s so much more to be told about the decisions and details that derailed those devious designs.  Two days in July, 1957.  That’s all it took to change our lives forever--no, that’s not correct.  That’s all it took to steer our lives along the paths they were always destined to travel. 

     The wretched paths, our wretched paths, entwined…     

***
 

The end of this one…if it does not dig deep and touch you, perhaps emotionally tear you apart, well…then I’ve not succeeded.  But, then again, it’s not me telling the story, it’s Peg, and trust me, you will feel her anguish.  Every time I read this one it tears me apart!

Also of note, when I revised and added about 8,000 words, it also had a different name.  “A Torrent of Ages” was replaced by, “The Oblivion Express,” a title quite appropriate for the tale Peg tells, but since it is her tale, she decided—along with a suggestion from my editor, hehe—that, “The Perceptive One,” was perfect.  And she was right; she would know, oh yes, she would know...

Next up, as we round the corner for the home stretch, we find out what one thing is closest to one man’s soul… 

Hieronymus Bosch's chaotic art relates perfectly to Travis' destiny.  You'll understand once you read "The Perceptive One."

Teaser #8: “Strange Trees.”

One of the places I truly love to explore with my writing is nature.  There’s so much out there we cannot imagine, so many possibilities; it’s vast and unlimited and mysterious in ways we can never really know.  It’s a boon for the imaginative and willing writer.  I’m willing--show me!  Let me see your heart.  Let me know your secrets!  Talk to me, whisper, scream…

Let’s dance!

Okay, well, yeah, I dig nature.  I particularly dig strange trees.  One of my fondest fascinations.  They are art of a different sort, natural, nature wielding as a sculptor, shaping, breaking down and reconstructing.  Trees in general, and strange trees in particular, are a natural wonder we should not ignore.

This one was originally called, “Shadows and Tall Trees,” after the U2 song.  But it was changed recently as I love the more direct title, as well as have many story ideas that relate to this subject, even a faux anthology idea, that I may eventually work out.  (Isn’t that the way it is for all writers, though?  Juggling this idea and that one and a novel or three, plus the short fiction and, hey, I need a story for that anthology asap.)

Photographer Terrence Blank and his part-time girlfriend, Mandy (it’s explained in the story), are out in the forest when she’s stricken with her time of the month.  As she wanders off to deal with it--improvising as she must, it's also in the story, hehe--he has the time to clicks off a couple a couple more rolls with these thoughts in his head:

***    

    I continued to take pictures, really fascinated by the luminescent quality of the bone white trees as the late afternoon sun glimmered off of them.  An ambience of otherworldliness permeated my perceptions.  It even registered in my ears, a buzzing, hypnotic drone, the hum of nature, of thousands of small sounds gathered as mass, as something of substance, yet still tiny and indistinct: the undercurrent of life; of dirt, foliage and sky; of insects and animals unseen; of slowly evolving shadows and that something more that defines silence that is not silent, its tongue is simply of a language no human can understand.       

***

Later that evening, he awakens from dreams that might be something more than dreams.  And voices.  Here’s a sample from that sequence.  Yes, a double shot of samples today. 

***

     “So, bad dream or what?”

    “Yeah, I guess.  Not sure, but I heard voices, weird voices. Like…like if trees could talk, this would have been what they sounded like.”

     “That’s freaky, especially since you were talking in your sleep.”

     I raised an eyebrow in her direction.  She continued.   

     “Yeah.  I could hear you from the sofa—you woke me up.  I thought you must have been on the phone or something because I could only hear part of what you were saying.  Nothing really clear, but you were talking.  It was odd.  That’s when I got up and came to your door.  Curiosity, you know; wondering who you were talking to at this ungodly hour.”

     I shook my head, completely lost, disorientated.  Had I been dreaming, talking in my sleep, the words landing light as mist on my eardrums?  That would explain why I actually thought I heard the voices, but I still could remember none of the dream. 

     That’s when I realized I could smell the blood of her in ways that defied average perceptions or sensations.  I shook my head again. 

***

Hmmm, what is up?  What’s going on?  The revelations in this one, ohhhh, they are shocking once the forest reveals its heart to Terrence.

Next, we meet Peg Saunders, a young woman with a depth of perception that costs her so much…

                                   A strange tree, of course.  Lovely, too!

Teaser #7: "Make Pretty."

Another story where addiction is one of the keys, though a different kind of addiction: a narcissistic, media driven, Hollywood take on addiction.

The idea for this story originated while reading some work by Charlis Birkin, who specialized in a style of horror known as contes cruels. I can’t find a specific definition of contes cruels, but the stories tend to veer toward some depth of human cruelty at their heart; their sick and twisted heart.

The sample here is after ageing actress, Christina Conero, has followed instructions, snorting a powder that promises to be her personal fountain of youth. After a lovemaking session with actor and beleaguered husband, Philip Raines, this snippet sets us up for the first of two horrific jabs; the second one is more the knockout punch, the cruel revelation at the heart of this insidious piece.

[the lukewarm towel is covering her face]

***

“What is the purpose of this?” he asked, tugging at the lukewarm towel.

“You’ll see in the morning. Good night now, I need my beauty sleep.”

He finished his cigarette in silence only broken by the periodic shuffling of sheets as she reached up and touched the towel, as if making sure it was in place.

“You know I love you,” he said, before turning on his side and falling asleep.

He was dreaming about when Christina and he had first gotten together, and that time in Hawaii, on the warm sand with the moon as a shy spotlight. He said he would love her forever.

And she screamed…but that was not in the dream.

He flung his arm to Christina’s side of the bed; it was empty.

“Christina, what’s wrong?  Where are you?”

She screamed again.

He took four urgent strides to the bathroom and shoved the door open.

“Christi—”

***

STOP!  No, don't want to give it all away!  Oh, I want to tell you more, but you’ll just have to wait until The Dark is Light Enough is released, 11-11-11.

If you are following this blog, you’ve probably noticed the collection has a wide variety of subject matter and styles. Though I see a more weird fiction slant to my current stories—well, except for the novels, man, I have no idea where they come from or what they are, but I like em!—over the years I’ve approached storytelling from many different angles. Probably influenced by a lot of the writers who got their careers in gear in the 80s, like Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale, David J. Schow and the likes, as well as Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and J.G. Ballard before them. An odd mix, toss in the Masters of the Weird, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and many more, the stories are the result of this melting pot of influence as channeled through my perceptions, my voice. And I've not even mentioned how music plays a Huge role in much of my writing; art as well.

I believe life itself and simply being curious and open to the possibilities and letting my imagination run with them is probably the biggest influence of all, hehe...

Next up, we head back to the forest, where nature has its own devious designs…

This Bizarre and Brilliant artwork by Eric Lacombe perfectly captures the vibe of "Make Pretty."
Enjoy!

Teaser #6: “Not Breathing.”

This is the other drug story.  No, actually, the drugs are quite peripheral here…if at all.  Or perhaps this is more a story of addiction…?  Dead souls lingering?  The dreaded limbo in between life and death?  One and all of the above or…something else?

Don’t ask me, my answer might change with each reading… 

Ah, sweet ambiguity.

As I have mentioned before, I don’t tend to write simple horror stories.  Layers and more are what excite me in the stories I write as well as the stories I read that leave the biggest impression.  “Not Breathing” epitomizes ambiguity, an uncertain thread weaving in and out of the main character’s perceptions, in which the original vibe—a person who has had their life shattered by drug addiction—might just be completely wrong!

Again, I’ll let the reader figure it out and build their own takes on it. 

Here’s a sample, this one from somewhere within, where the main character has had an enlightening experience and goes back to the desolate one room apartment he and his partner live in; or is there really a partner?  This is the prelude to further revelations.

***

         I strip off my clothes and snuggle next to you on the stained and torn mattress.  Pulling bundled, filthy sheets over my feeble body—cockroaches scuttle away at my intrusion--I whisper “I love you” and “I’m sorry I was gone, I had to see my kids, but…”        

     The words die in my throat. 

     You don’t stir, don’t respond.  I am not one to think much of it, but then I realize two powerfully blunt truths:  You are cold in ways that make my skin hurt. 

     And you are not breathing.

     My tether, my anchor to this world and the pain and fury of being human, of aching in ways that scrape out the hollow within and leave a vacancy where the soul should reside—you are not breathing!

     I shake you a little, “c’mon,” but you don’t c’mon.  You chill the emptiness with your barren presence. 

     I hold you because there is nothing else for me to do, there is nothing else for me to say--oh, a dashed off, “I’m sorry for leaving tonight”--but that is simply the punch-line to the joke that is my existence.

***

What follows confirms the hallucinatory path the whole story has actually taken, a kind of drug association via the main character's disoriented worldview...

A special note here.  As writers, we all sense when strides forward in our writing have been attained.  There’s an odd moment here, this line, “I shake you a little, “c’mon,” but you don’t c’mon.  You chill the emptiness with your barren presence,” that served as one of those moments for me.  That’s the raw line; I sensed an initial need to revise it, because that was simply the tendency with much of my writing a few years ago, always whittling away, perfecting, not realizing that perhaps perfection was in the original burst of words the story was built on.  Odd, but that line was there, and I remember looking at it, thinking, Why?  Why change a thing?  Why mess with it?  Sure, it may seem like nothing to others, but it always hits me when I read it how I know it was perhaps a moment where a trust of my talent—or whatever is on hand in writing these stories—was engaged.  I tend to revise as necessary, but now I also tend to trust those moments when I sense I got it right the first time, at least a little more often.  A part of the learning process; the constant learning process. 

Next up, perhaps the most insidious, downright cruel piece in the book…

This densely constructed drawing by the Excellent Horror Artist, Erin Wells, beautifully captures much of the elements within this strange tale; look closely, there's faces scattered all about.