tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12934926025135692322024-03-13T09:30:36.267-07:00Preposterous TwaddlecockThoughts and ramblings on things and stuff by novelist Ray Garton.RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-82367261243187671712017-02-23T23:13:00.000-08:002017-02-23T23:14:06.422-08:00I've Found the Answer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ask any writer and he or she will tell you that the question most commonly asked of <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">him or her</span> is, “Where do you get your ideas?” You’ll get the same answer if you ask any writer for his or her <i>least</i> favorite question. It is a question that has no good answer. Ideas fall into our heads or are developed over long periods of time, and they come from everywhere, from...we don’t <i>know</i> where. Writers hate the question because we have no answer.<br /><br />Well, I think I’ve found the answer.<br /><br />For some years now, I’ve been having a lot of neuropathic pain on the left side of my body. The entire left side, top to bottom, front and back, and even in my mouth, tongue, and eyeball. It has grown steadily worse, become increasingly disruptive, and has seriously damaged my ability to work.<br /><br />A month ago, I saw a neurologist who pulled up my records on his computer and showed me an MRI of my brain that clearly revealed a prominent spot in the center of the right side of my brain. A tumor there would explain the weird left-side-only pain I’ve been having. The problem with that MRI was that it had been taken in 2007—and <i>I had never seen it</i>! I stared at that spot, shocked into apoplectic silence. When I told the doctor I had never seen the MRI before, he did not believe me. “Oh, I’m sure you reviewed it with the doctor who ordered it.” But I had not. He said he wanted to take another MRI to see if the spot had grown or multiplied.<br /><br />That was a month ago. I just got the MRI results today.<br /><br />In the meantime, while I waited in paralyzing suspense, I decided to do a little research on that 2007 MRI I had never seen. It had been ordered by a neurologist I was seeing back then for pain control. I’d just had the third operation on my right hip, a hip replacement to replace the first replacement that didn’t take. I was having a lot of pain and needed help managing it. But I soon realized this was probably not the man to address the problem. He was disheveled, frequently confused, he forgot an appointment, and his office was a mess. Records were stacked everywhere—on tables, in boxes, boxes on top of boxes. I assumed he was either on drugs or mentally ill and only saw him a handful of times.<br /><br />I was having a lot of procedures back then because of that hip and I guess I decided it was conceivable that I had forgotten that MRI. I had no memory of having it done and still don't. But I <i>know</i> I would have remembered a <i>spot on my goddamned brain</i>. I never saw that MRI, but knowing who ordered it makes that easier to understand. I found some California Medical Board documents online and discovered that, two years after ordering that MRI, this doctor <i>killed a patient</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He had a female patient on the Fentanyl patch, a pain pump, morphine, and Valium, and he allowed an unlicensed, inexperienced assistant to administer the woman’s pain pump refill. The assistant gave her <i>eight times</i> the prescribed dose and the woman collapsed in the parking lot outside the office and died later that evening. The doctor was stripped of his license, but was told that if he decided to renew his license, he would have to take an extensive course in record keeping, because his records were a disaster.<br /><br />I wondered if that could be the problem. Maybe that MRI with the spot wasn’t mine at all. Maybe it was someone <i>else's</i> MRI, someone <i>else's</i> brainspot, and had been misfiled, or something, by Dr. Julius Kelp. I could hope. And I did, fervently, for a month. But little could distract me from the gigantic deep-purple neon sign that kept flashing in the middle of my mind:</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <b>BRAIN TUMOR!</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />I was surprised that even more frightening than a brain tumor itself was the prospect of brain surgery. The idea of my skull being cut open and my brain being tampered with probably kept me from sleeping more than anything else. With it came the fear that such an operation might leave me spending the rest of my life begging George to tell me about the rabbits.<br /><br />Not knowing something about your health, like whether or not you have a tumor growing in your head, is a monster that gets bigger and more menacing the later the night gets. It’s been a rough month.<br /><br />Today, I saw the doctor to get the results. It turns out that old MRI is mine after all. So is the spot. It’s still there and has not changed in ten years. It’s a...spot. I didn’t know you could have just damned <i>spot</i> on your damned <i>brain</i>, but apparently you can and I do.<br /><br />I’ve decided I’m going to carry a picture of that MRI with me wherever I go, and every time someone asks me that question—“Where do you get your ideas?”—I’m going to take it out, point to that spot on my brain, and say, “See this? That’s where they come from. That’s my cerebral idea sphincter. The ideas come out of there. Sometimes in fragments, sometimes in one whole piece. It’s long been speculated that every writer has a cerebral idea sphincter, but mine is the first one that’s ever been captured in an MRI.”<br /><br />Hey, these days people will believe anything.<br /><br />NOTE: I’ll be selling wallet-sized photos of the MRI showing my brain and its spot—which you can call your own!—to writers only (be ready to show your license) in the lobby.<br /><br />I managed to keep from spending the past month under my bed thanks to a small group of friends who were extremely supportive and generous. You know who you are. Thank you. I love you.</span><br />
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RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-87625944190571537362016-10-28T00:03:00.004-07:002016-10-28T08:19:56.963-07:00CRAWLERS: The Story Behind the Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All writers have influences. One does not decide to become a writer in a vacuum. Every one of us were so moved by other writers, so emotionally marked by their books and stories and movies and comic books and poetry, that we were compelled to write our own books and stories and movies and comic books and poetry. Gustave Flaubert’s <i>Madame Bovary</i> was heavily influenced by Cervantes’ <i>Don Quixote</i>. Edgar Allan Poe’s detective stories about C. Auguste Dupin inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. What inspired me to write <i>Crawlers</i>?<br /><br />Monster movies. Okay, so it’s not Cervantes. But I assure you I was just as moved as Flaubert.<br /><i>Crawlers</i> was originally published by Cemetery Dance Publications for their Collectors Club as a hardcover novella limited to only 303 copies and it was my first homage to the monster movies I practically lived on growing up. The second was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nids-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CJCE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477634697&sr=1-1&keywords=%27nids+ray+garton+kindle" target="_blank"><b><i>'Nids</i></b></a>, my salute to the big bug movies of the 1950s, which is currently available from Open Road Media. And I’m sure at some point I will write another. I still frequently revisit those old movies and am still inspired by them.<br /><br />Many of those monster movies were set in small towns, often in the desert, the kind of town where most people know each other. The monsters were sometimes aliens from outer space, as in <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85xpN_Ohwqs" target="_blank">It Came from Outer Space</a>,</i> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baoC7F7EWn4" target="_blank"><i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i></a>. Sometimes, they were the result of science gone wrong, as in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdv4QA-O1bg" target="_blank"><i>The Fly</i></a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtU1YYxQXJw" target="_blank"><i>Tarantula</i></a>, or the product of atomic testing, as in <i>so many</i> monster movies of the era from the destruction wreaked by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNmk4uTZ6vI" target="_blank"><i>Godzilla</i></a> in Japan to the giant ants of <i>Them!</i> crawling out of the southern California desert. And sometimes, they were freaks of nature, like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svyPswixryM" target="_blank"><i>The Creature from the Black Lagoon</i></a>, or the result of alien tampering as in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8VNS3GQsMo" target="_blank"><i>Attack of the 50-foot Woman</i></a>. Whatever their origin, one thing is certain—the 1950s had an abundant supply of them.<br /><br />The flowers in <i>Crawlers</i> invite comparisons to 1962's apocalyptic sci-fi classic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqrLqg3w6AU" target="_blank"><i>The Day of the Triffids</i></a>, it bears no similiarity to that movie. However, it’s worth noting that the movie inspired a line in the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Boz0O1SqM" target="_blank">"Science Fiction Double Feature"</a> from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4plqh6obZW4" target="_blank"><i>The Rocky Horror Picture Show</i></a>, and that <i>The Day of the Triffids</i> was based on John Wyndham’s 1951 novel of the same of name, and it was the opening scene of that novel—in which the protagonist wakes in a hospital bed with his eyes bandaged—that inspired Alex Garland to write the 2002 movie <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ynwAgQlDQ" target="_blank"><i>28 Days Later</i></a> Monsters are begetting monsters all over the place.<br /><br />In <i>Crawlers</i>, I wanted to use a monster of my own devising—as opposed to, say, the giant spiders of <i>'Nids</i>, which had been done numerous times before—and set it in the kind of small town so familiar to those old movies. I decided to set it in the town of Mount Crag—the location of my novellas <i>The Folks</i> and <i>The Folks 2: No Place Like Home</i>, although it is otherwise unrelated to those books—because it is a somewhat isolated mountain town that lends itself well to such a story.<br /><br />I have rewritten the ending of <i>Crawlers</i>. I explain my rather embarrassing reasons in the book’s introduction. The original ending is somewhat uncharacteristic of my work because it’s...well...happy. Yes, that’s right, I wrote a happy ending. Not just happy but <i>treacly</i>, an ending in which the sun <i>quite literally</i> breaks through the dark clouds. That in itself is not such a bad thing, but the ending...well, it <i>was</i> a bad thing, in my opinion, a logistical mess that urgently needed changing. If you’ve read the Cemetery Dance edition, this isn’t it, and things turn out differently.<br /><br />I’m likely to pop a monster movie in the moviola any old time, but it’s at this time of year when I most frequently revisit the kind of movies that inspired <i>Crawlers</i>. It’s just not Halloween without some monsters or even some of their remakes, like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUsyXQ8Wrs" target="_blank"><i>The Blob</i></a> from 1958 and from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVjS-BZyh4k" target="_blank">1988</a>, or 1951's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5dwbZKd64Y" target="_blank"><i>The Thing</i></a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7t-919Ec9U" target="_blank">John Carpenter's horrifying 1982 remake</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUfdjgg1qqk" target="_blank"><i>The Spider</i></a> from Bert I. Gordon, aka Mr. B.I.G., who specialized in giant monsters like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgpv7_4uonQ" target="_blank"><i>The Amazing Colossal Man</i></a> or the huge grasshoppers in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqVL8blr-rw" target="_blank"><i>The Beginning of the End</i></a>.<br /><br />When 1950s audiences were tossing their popcorn during monster movies, the subconscious fears were of more down-to-earth things like nuclear war and the communist threat. The movies were in black and white, as were their morals. Reviewing my monster movie homages has helped me to understand the kind of fiction I’m writing today. It addresses more current fears, both directly and indirectly, and reflects a more complex moral landscape. Paranoia has once again seized the country, the entire globe. Now, rather than communism, it is the mythical Illuminati that is the focus of a lot of fear. Now, instead of worrying about communist infiltration, many fear the activities at Bohemian Grove and the mysterious goals of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group. Much attention is being paid to shady and nefarious government activities of the past, like Project Paperclip and MK Ultra, and many wonder what the government might be up to <i>right now</i>, what kind of experiments it could be performing on us <i>today</i>, and whether we'll be around to learn about them two or three decades in the future. And then, of course, there are the usual terrors, chief among them the possibility of another devastating nuclear world war.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />From decade to decade and generation to generation, many things change, but one remains the same: We are kept in a continuous state of ongoing fear and anxiety. Therefore, we look for relief, for escape.<br /><br />I humbly offer <i>Crawlers</i> to serve your escapist needs. It can be purchased for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Crawlers-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B01MFD2CRW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477667936&sr=1-1&keywords=crawlers+ray+garton+kindle" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Kindle at Amazon</b></span></a>. Other outlets will be forthcoming.<br /><br />Take some time to smell the flowers.</span><br />
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<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-25567264559628827012016-07-24T19:53:00.000-07:002017-11-09T15:53:59.172-08:00No, I Do Not Believe In Werewolves.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I really don’t. I’ve found the most shocking thing about being a horror writer is how many people think I do simply because I’ve written novels about werewolves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For the last two decades, I’ve been denouncing a book I wrote called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Place-Lorraine-Warren-Book-ebook/dp/B00O6FFRBM/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469414189&sr=1-1&keywords=in+a+dark+place+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>In a Dark Place</i></b></a>, which was initially published as “the story of a true haunting.” I’ve been denouncing it because the book and the two “demonologists” who "investigated" the "case," Ed and Lorraine Warren, were frauds. (I made all of those quotation marks in the air with my fi<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ngers.)</span> I made every effort to make the book entertaining and scary and I encourage people to read it for that, but it's certainly not a "true story." (It has been reprinted without those claims at my insistence.) In the process of denouncing the book and the Warrens, I’ve also expressed my feelings about the entire paranormal industry, which are no different. And yet, people are still appalled to learn that I don’t believe in ghosts because I wrote a ghost story called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Loveliest-Dead-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CJOC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469414495&sr=1-1&keywords=the+loveliest+dead+ray+garton+kindle" target="_blank"><b><i>The Loveliest Dead</i></b></a>. Or that I don’t believe in vampires because I wrote about them in three novels.<br /><br />Others seem to think that writers condone everything they write about. My father believed that if I wrote about violence, then I condoned it, and if I didn’t condone it, I wouldn’t write about it. Of course, my dad left school for good in the sixth grade. But that particular excuse is not always available.<br /><br />I once approached a respected, well-educated horror writer for a blurb for one of my werewolf novels, both of which include brutal rapes committed by werewolves. She explained, quite haughtily, that she had heard my books depicted violence toward women and she could not endorse that. (I wonder what she would have thought had she actually read them. We'll never know.) This suggests to me that because I’ve depicted violence against women in my fiction, she believes that I condone violence against women. She gave me no reason to come to any other conclusion. Of course, it doesn’t matter what her reasoning was because I cannot take seriously anyone who judges books not by merit but by agenda—including books she hasn’t read.<br /><br />Things like rape and other violent acts do exist, they do occur, they are part of life on planet earth. If fiction cannot reflect that, then it is useless and has no purpose. If art cannot hold a mirror up to the entire scope of the human experience, then it has no other reason to exist. And if you can’t endorse horror fiction that depicts violence toward women and <i>only</i> because it depicts violence toward women, what the hell are you doing in the genre?<br /><br />For those who have not read my fiction, I have always made a great effort to portray violence of any kind, including rape, as horrifically as possible. I don’t want it to appear on the pages of my work as anything but what it is, one of the many horrible things we humans have been doing to each other for ages now and show no signs of stopping.<br /><br />Rape is an act of violence, although I have seen it depicted in fiction as a kind of rough foreplay, which I personally find disgusting. That is not how I depict rape in my fiction. I do not, for the record, condone rape. I do not condone rape by werewolves. Nor do I condone rape by any other fictional, nonexistent creatures like vampires, lizard men, interdimensional monsters, or honest, decent human beings who are successful politicians—none of which I believe in, by the way.<br /><br />We as a species seem to be having an increasingly difficult time differentiating between fiction and fact, fantasy and reality. I blame video games and binge-watching.</span><br />
<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-85666786158534599372016-07-14T02:31:00.000-07:002016-07-14T03:32:04.468-07:00Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them by Frank Langella<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“See anything you like, professor?” That’s what Frank Langella asked Laurence Olivier after running through the room naked.<br /><br />He knew Bette Davis late in her life, when she was, he writes, “heading toward her grave resolutely maintaining the courage to be hated.”<br /><br />Rex Harrison was a “son of a bitch.”<br /><br />Upon their first meeting, Anthony Perkins asked him, “How big is your cock?”<br /><br />In a TV version of <i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Mark of Zorro</span></i>, Yvonne de Carlo played his mother in front of the cameras while treating him “like a pretty girl in the back seat of a convertible on a hot summer night” off camera.<br /><br />These are some of the names dropped in <i>Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Have Known Them</i>, Frank Langella’s sexy, funny, bittersweet, and sometimes downright sad memoir of his decades as a stage and screen actor. Each of the sixty-five chapters in the book covers someone he knew or met or had some connection with, however briefly, someone who is no longer with us and can no longer protest or, worse, sue.<br /><br />Langella happily confesses his own youthful narcissism in what is, however entertaining, a litany of narcissists, people firmly convinced that they <i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">are</span></i> the center of the universe. While spending time with such people is rarely an agreeable experience for us civilians, Langella, having a typically inflated actor’s ego himself, is able to cut through all of that in most cases and show us the person within all that bluster and pomp.<br /><br />This is not exactly a showbiz tell-all. Rather than giving us every sordid detail, Langella teases us with bits and pieces of his life, glimpses of past moments and experiences, and manages to leave us wanting more. Dishy without being mean, it’s a breezy book filled with familiar faces and names (to people o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ld enough to recognize all the names</span>, anyway) that makes for pleasant reading for anyone who enjoys books about show business. Best of all, unlike so many showbiz memoirs, it doesn’t leave us feeling like we need to take a shower with lye soap and a steel brush.<br /><br />While I’m on the subject, I want to point out one of my favorite Frank Langella performances in a movie that never received much attention. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NmF2Dx46RY" target="_blank"><b><i>Starting Out in the Evening</i></b></a>, based on the novel by Brian Morton (which I have not read), Langella plays a formerly celebrated writer who has been forgotten by virtually everyone as he works on his final novel, which he has been writing for a decade. The story involves his relationship with his daughter (Lili Taylor) and a graduate student named Heather (Lauren Ambrose), who tries to convince him to let her pick his brain for her Master’s thesis. Langella gives a quietly powerful performance in a movie that is just as quietly powerful. See it if you can.</span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-9022254189718115652016-03-26T13:14:00.000-07:002016-03-26T13:14:05.331-07:00Here's to Those Who Make Us Laugh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On Thursday, March 24, I logged onto the computer in the afternoon and the first thing I saw was a headline stating that Garry Shandling had died at the age of 66. I stared at it for several long seconds, then looked for any indication that it was satire, or some kind of marketing campaign, or <i>some</i>thing, <i>any</i>thing but the truth.<br /><br />No such luck.<br /><br />The older I get and the more of my favorite funny people die, the more I understand just how much, and how deeply, I value them. I’m sure it’s a little out of proportion. When Johnny Carson died, I cried. George Carlin’s death was like losing a friend. When I learned that Joan Rivers had died, I wanted to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. The news that Robin Williams had committed suicide darkened my mood for days, and it took some time before I could watch his recorded performances, whether in movies or on stage, without tearing up. On one level, I know it’s absurd. I knew none of these people, I’d never even <i>met</i> them. I really have no idea what kind of people they were in their personal lives. For all I knew, they hated dogs and cats, beat their kids, or drugged women so they could have sex with them while they were unconscious. <i>But</i> . . .<br /><br />. . . every time I saw them, they made me happy. No matter what was going on in my life at the time, no matter how down I might have been, they made me drop my problems and laugh. The more life I live, the more I understand what an awesome, miraculous thing that is.<br /><br />There is no way to control laughter. When we laugh, we surrender ourselves to feeling good, no matter how bad we might feel at the time. It’s an explosive thing, totally involuntary. You can <i>try</i> to fake it, and you might fool others with your artificial laughter. <i>But you cannot fool yourself</i>. Real laughter is an uncontrollable response to something that — somehow, almost magically — reaches inside of us and tickles us in some mysterious place, pushes internal buttons that cannot be ignored.<br /><br />We all have internal buttons, and when we refer to someone pushing our buttons, we usually mean it in a bad way. Someone has made us angry or hurt us by pushing a button that elicits a negative response. I would guess that we all have more of <i>those</i> buttons than the ones that make us laugh. The laughter buttons are buried deep in our viscera. They’re much harder to find, especially as we get older. But when someone <i>does</i> find one (or more) and pushes it, we are rendered helpless and we surrender to that involuntary, explosive response, like a sneeze. Maybe sneezing is a bad analogy because it’s unlikely that someone can <i>make</i> us sneeze, but a genuine laugh is just as spontaneous and uncontrollable.<br /><br />As far as I’m concerned, the people who can make me laugh are akin to wizards and witches, people with supernatural powers. They don’t know me, we’ve never met, and yet they are able to find that button buried deep inside me that makes me open my mouth and throw back my head and let loose. Think about it for a while. We take it for granted, but it is a truly amazing and mysterious thing.<br /><br />I am in awe of anyone who can make me laugh, especially if it is a deliberate act performed by someone who has never met me, knows nothing about me or my life, and yet is capable of reaching inside me and finding and pushing that deeply hidden button.<br /><br />I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a young boy. I started writing as soon as I was capable of it, and most of what I wrote was horror, very dark and violent. I’ve written a great deal about what a salvation horror movies and fiction were to me when I was growing up because my childhood in a perpetually frightening apocalyptic religious cult, with the added threat of a physically and emotionally abusive father, kept me in a continuous state of terror. Scary movies and stories were not a genuine threat, I knew they weren’t real, but they could scare the hell out of me in a way that was fun and enjoyable and safe, and it was a release from the more real terrors I faced. I wrote horror as a natural response to that, as a cathartic release. It was a way of stabbing my middle finger in the air to all the fears that I lived with back then.<br /><br />At the same time, I sought out comedy, anything that would make me laugh, whether it was <i>Mad</i> magazine or TV sitcoms. The funny people who brightened my childhood were Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Totie Fields, Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett — don’t get me started, I could go on like this for hours because, my god, the list is endless. Even though I was an almost obsessive fan of horror and spent so much time watching and reading it and, in my own primitive and childish way, writing it, my secret desire was to be Rob Petrie when I grew up. For those not familiar with the name, that was the character played by Dick Van Dyke on <i>The Dick Van Dyke Show</i>. He was the head comedy writer on <i>The Alan Brady Show</i> and wrote comedy in an office — with a piano, no less! — with Buddy Sorrell and Sally Rogers (incidentally, Dawn and I have cats named Buddy and Sally), writing monologues and sketches for the show, with occasional visits from Mel Cooley, Alan’s son-in-law. That was my dream job. Hell, it still is, even though I’ve since learned that a room full of working TV writers bears no resemblance to that today. And it probably didn’t then. I mean, it’s TV, so everything is softened, watered down. Alan Brady never held Buddy Sorrell out of a window in the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, high over Michigan Avenue, as Sid Caesar once did to Mel Brooks.<br /><br />It was <i>The Dick Van Dyke Show</i> that made me start noticing the names in the credits — written by, created by. Carl Reiner, the show’s creator, writer of 54 of the 158 episodes, and the man who played Alan Brady, was an early writing idol of mine, as were Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, who co-created and sometimes wrote <i>Get Smart</i>, along with Neil Simon, who wrote <i>The Odd Couple</i> and <i>Plaza Suite</i> and <i>The Star-Spangled Girl</i> and <i>The Out of Towners</i> and other things that made me laugh, along with so many other practitioners of what was, to me, an amazing and mysterious art. I wanted to be them, too, when I grew up. Or maybe I just wanted to be Jewish, I don’t know. As a child, I was mystified by how they managed to get such an uncontrollable response from me as laughter. Like I said, they were wizards.<br /><br />How did they do it? What kind of secret knowledge did they possess? What they did seemed so impossibly far above me that I would never be able to reach it, like writing music or having a baby. I knew what was scary and had some confidence that I could work within that, but the ability to create laughter out of thin air — that seemed like magic. Like sawing a woman in half or making doves appear out of nowhere. Of course, I soon learned that those things were merely manufactured illusion. But generating laughter? That is some real, genuine, unfakeable magic.<br /><br />The pros make it look effortless. A comedian walks onto the stage, goes to the microphone, and starts talking to us in a way that makes us laugh <i>and</i> makes us believe that those words are spontaneous, those movements and gestures and that body language are natural and unrehearsed. A stand-up comedian is an actor, and as with all actors, the really talented ones convince you that they’re not acting, they’re just standing there, talking to you, and being funny. But first, a stand-up comedian is a writer. The entire performance on the stage is first written. That’s a damned juggling act, and I am in awe of those who do it well.<br /><br />When I write, I do it alone in my office, and when I’m done with the story or book, I deliver it to its destination, and move on to the next, which I also write alone in my office. The worst thing that can happen to me as a writer is having to write a synopsis of a book, whether it’s one I haven’t written yet or one I have, it doesn’t matter. I complain about this bitterly at every opportunity. A stand-up comedian, on the other hand, then has to <i>test</i> the written material on stage in front of a group of strangers at various levels of inebriation. What a terrifying thought! The response is immediate — laughter or silence, possibly heckling. (If you’re a novelist, now that I’ve made you consider that for a moment and imagine yourself having to do that with your work, you’re probably going to have nightmares about it.)<br /><br />What I’m trying to say is that we tend to take comedians for granted and enjoy their work without ever giving any thought to precisely what it is they do while standing at that microphone. It’s astonishing how much they have to master to convince us that they’re just telling us some funny stories and observations in a conversational way that happens to bend us over laughing.<br /><br />When they leave us, people who have that talent and go to all that work to make us laugh always leave behind a painful silence once filled with laughter. In the last five years, we have lost some spectacular talent in comedy. People like Patrice O’Neal, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, David Brenner, John Pinette, Rick Mayall, Robin Williams, Joan Rivers, Jan Hooks, Taylor Negron, Mike Nichols, Reynaldo Rey, Rick Ducommun, Stan Freberg, Anne Meara, Jack Carter. Garry Shandling is the latest, and unfortunately he will not be the last. But like all of those other people, Shandling made us laugh in his own unique way. Other comedians do impressions of his distinctive voice, facial expressions, and mannerisms, as they do of other legendary comedians from Jack Benny on, and they will be doing Shandling impressions for a long, long time to come, but they are only impressions. They cannot not push our buttons in the way that only Garry Shandling could because they are not Garry Shandling. No one is Garry Shandling. Now, not even Garry Shandling is Garry Shandling. He’s been cancelled.<br /><br />But we still have the reruns.<br /></span><br />
RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-25174510384890398272016-03-16T14:12:00.000-07:002016-03-16T14:12:05.862-07:00VORTEX: The Story Behind the Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mt. Shasta is many things to many people. In its mystical slopes, some people see a sleeping woman, others a sleeping Indian, and still others an Indian princess. I see horror fiction.<br /><br />It is a beautiful sight, with a lovely, small town at its foot bearing the mountain’s name. The drive alone — from my house, it’s 45 minutes on I-5 — is breathtaking as it winds past dark forests and craggy, gray peaks. If it weren’t for all the traffic, you’d swear you were in Middle Earth. I have returned to Mt. Shasta many times over the years. In 1987, I attended the Harmonic Convergence there, a New Age fair of channels, psychics, healers, drum circles, and vendors selling just about every woo-woo goo-gaw you can think of and some that never occurred to you. Dawn and I have stayed at the nearby Dunsmuir Railroad Park Resort on a few occasions, and we enjoy visiting the town of Mt. Shasta. But I’ve returned to Mt. Shasta a few times in my fiction, as well.<br /><br />My novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Channel-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CMKS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162188&sr=1-1&keywords=dark+channel+by+ray+garton" target="_blank"><i><b>Dark Channel</b></i></a> was the first story I set there, inspired by a combination of my visit to the Harmonic Convergence and popular channel J.Z. Knight. In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Loveliest-Dead-Ray-Garton/dp/1497642698/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162258&sr=1-1&keywords=the+loveliest+dead+by+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>The Loveliest Dead</i></b></a>, psychic Lily Rourke owned a New Age book store called the Crystal Well. The area has shown up in disguise, as well. In <b><i>The Folks</i></b> (1 and 2, both of which will be available later this year), Pinecrest and Mt. Crag are pseudonyms for the Mt. Shasta area. My novella <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vortex-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B01CXXDDWI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162332&sr=1-1&keywords=vortex+by+ray+garton" target="_blank"><i><b>Vortex</b></i></a> returns to Mt. Shasta, and it takes Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph with it.<br /><br />Moffett and Keoph first appeared in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Life-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CIYI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162411&sr=1-1&keywords=night+life+by+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>Night Life</i></b></a>, the sequel to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Live-Girls-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CK64/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162442&sr=1-1&keywords=live+girls+by+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>Live Girls</i></b></a>. Martin Burgess, a wildly successful horror novelist, has an insatiable curiosity about the paranormal. He wants to know if the stuff he writes about — ghosts, vampires, werewolves — really exist, and he has a small army of computer geeks and conspiracy theorists seeking out bizarre incidents and esoteric activity for him. When they inform him of the possibility that vampires are active in Los Angeles, he searches for the right private investigators to hire for the job. After deciding on Karen Moffett of Los Angeles and Gavin Keoph of San Francisco, he hires them and send them in search of vampires. In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bestial-Ray-Garton/dp/1497642574/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162467&sr=1-1&keywords=bestial+by+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>Bestial</i></b></a>, the sequel to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ravenous-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CL4U/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162494&sr=1-1&keywords=ravenous+by+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>Ravenous</i></b></a>, Burgess hires them again to look into the possibility of werewolves in the northern California coastal town of Big Rock.<br /><br />I wanted to do more with Moffett and Keoph, but instead of having them show up in a sequel to investigate vampires or werewolves, I wanted to do something completely different with them. I decided to have Burgess send them to Mt. Shasta and see what would happen. I didn’t have many specifics in mind when I started VORTEX, but the novella has opened a lot of possibilities.<br /><br />In Mt. Shasta, the investigators meet Penny Jarvis, a young woman with some extraordinary abilities who comes from a secret, government-run school called Aquino Academy, where all of the students have extraordinary abilities. The first thing I wanted to do after finishing <b><i>Vortex</i></b> was to start on a novel about Penny and Aquino Academy. I was committed to do other things, though, and had to set that idea aside. But the academy is a fertile subject and I would like to do that sometime soon. I’m not sure how, but Moffett and Keoph would be involved, as would the new nemesis they encounter in <b><i>Vortex</i></b> when a creature named Pyk comes out of —<br /><br />Whoa. I’m getting carried away. I don’t want to spoil the story for you. My point is that <b><i>Vortex</i></b> is going to be a new jumping-off point for Moffett and Keoph. In it, the possibility of a relationship between the two investigators is introduced, and I will be pursuing that in future stories, as well.<br /><br />But for now, I will shut up and leave you to read <b><i>Vortex</i></b>. At the moment, it is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vortex-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B01CXXDDWI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458162332&sr=1-1&keywords=vortex+by+ray+garton" target="_blank">available for Kindle</a>, but other formats and a paperback edition are coming very soon. If you enjoy <b><i>Vortex</i></b>, I hope you'll post a review and spread the word.<br /><br />Go with Moffett and Keoph to Mt. Shasta. Enjoy the scenic beauty. Have a bite to eat. But don’t let your guard down. Something has come out of the mountain . . . and it’s hungry.</span><br />
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RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-23289681151491214252015-12-31T15:29:00.000-08:002015-12-31T21:34:19.341-08:00Obligatory Year-End Blog Post<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I’m not going write about what a depressing year it’s been. If you’ve been paying attention, you already know, and if you haven’t, I don’t want to be the one to break it to you. You can’t turn around these days without getting hit with some bad news. Instead, I’m going to focus on the things and people that got me to the end of this year intact.<br /><br />2015 was the year I read some of the work of Clark Asthon Smith thanks to my friend Scott Connors, who has written articles and reviews for a variety of publications, from <i>Weird Tales</i> to <i>Publisher's Weekly</i>. He co-edited some Smith collections with Ron Hilger, including <i>Star Changes: The Science Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith</i> and <i>The End of the Story</i>, and on his own, like <i>The Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith</i>, and he is currently writing a biography of Smith. Scott is the perfect person to introduce one to Smith because he’s so knowledgeable about his work.<br /><br />As a boy, I could not get into the work of H.P. Lovecraft because he kept telling me that things were too horrible to describe and I kept thinking, <i>Then hire somebody because I want to read about it!</i> I was 10 and I wanted bloodshed and monsters, preferably in plainer English than Lovecraft, who’s writing, back then, reminded me of the writing of Ellen G. White. That’s not a good thing. That changed as I grew older, of course, and learned to appreciate what Lovecraft had created in all those stories. Clark Ashton Smith was a member of the Lovecraft circle, of course, and their work has a lot in common. I think I prefer Smith’s prose to Lovecraft’s. He had a one-of-a-kind imagination and a sense of humor and irony that I enjoy. I look forward to reading more of his work.<br /><br />Among the new things I've read this year, <i>Mister White</i> by John C. Foster stands out. I was a tremendous fan of Robert Ludlum’s spy novels growing up. I had already cut my teeth on Ian Fleming, but Ludlum did not write about James Bonds, he wrote about mostly regular people who happened to be in the intelligence business or were drawn or stumbled into espionage. Foster does the same thing, but he combines an espionage thriller with a mystery — half the time, I had no idea what was going on, but in the most entertaining and compelling way possible — and a horror novel. It’s a tense, unnerving labyrinth and you should pick up a copy when it’s released in April 2016 by Grey Matter Press.<br /><br />I discovered a lot of streaming services in 2016, like The Grindhouse Channel and TubiTV and Reel Flix. Browsing through their selections lit up all of my nostalgia neurons. Unable to go to movie theaters for religious reasons as a boy, I used to cut movie advertisements out of the newspaper, tack them to a corkboard on my bedroom wall over my desk, and gaze at them as I did my homework, wondering what all of those movies were like on the big screen, uncut and without commercial interruptions. Most of them were horror movies, of course, and a whole lot of them are now available on these streaming services.<br /><br />One of the great movie ad campaigns of the 1970s was for a double feature, I EAT YOUR SKIN and I DRINK YOUR BLOOD. The advertisement in my local newspaper, which quickly ended up on my bedroom wall, looked like this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Along with the short <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF3ibiReHsA" target="_blank">TV spots</a> that seemed to run in every commercial break around the time of release, that newspaper ad had my imagination spinning as I wondered what those movies would be like. The double feature I concocted in my head as I stared at that newspaper cutout tacked to my corkboard was an epic, bloody nightmare, and I knew it would have to do because there was no chance I would ever see those movies. Now, thanks to The Grindhouse Channel, I have.<br /><br />Some things are better imagined than seen.<br /><br />If you like obscure horror, science fiction, and exploitation movies, I suggest giving these streaming services a look. If you’re like me, you’ll enjoy scanning the rows and rows of lost cheese treasures and forgotten schlock gems. As I write this, I have <i>Blood Beach</i> running on TV, a 1980 movie with another memorable ad campaign. I loved the poster so much, I had it on my wall for years, but I had never seen the movie until now.<br /><br />At the end of March in 2016, a young man named Philip Ault (you might remember <a href="http://preposteroustwaddlecock.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-brick-through-window-and-gibbering.html" target="_blank">reading about him here</a>) chased our neighbor Megan onto our porch, punched her in the face, and threatened to kill her. I managed to get her through the door and into the house without letting him in, too. Spouting a stream of meth-induced gibberish, he began threatening to kill all of us and threw a brick through our kitchen window before trying to climb into the house. I stabbed him in the arm twice with a decorative fantasy knife, the most available weapon at the time, to keep him from getting inside the house until the police arrived. They had to tase him twice to get him on the ground. We received a call from the District Attorney’s office about six weeks ago informing us that Mr. Ault, who was not competent to stand trial, is currently a guest of Napa State Hospital, where efforts are being made to rehabilitate him to a state where he <i>can</i> stand trial. They have three years to achieve that, and if it cannot be done within that time, Mr. Ault will become a permanent resident of the hospital. I got a story out of the whole thing called “A Flat and Dreary Monday Night,” which you can read in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cut-Corners-2-Ray-Garton/dp/1944044035/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451604426&sr=1-1&keywords=cut+corners+volume+2" target="_blank">Cut Corners: Volume 2</a>.</i><br /><br />While my health problems have continued with dogged persistence, I work when I’m able and have written a lot of short stories in 2016, including one I’m particularly proud of, “Paranormal Quest,” in the anthology <a href="http://www.amazon.com/X-Files-Trust-One-Brian-Keene/dp/1631402781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451604360&sr=1-1&keywords=the+x-files+trust+no+one" target="_blank"><i>The X-Files: Trust No One</i></a>, a collection of original X-Files stories by horror and science fiction writers edited by the great Jonathan Maberry.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm fortunate to have a lot of friends who have been so good to me over the past year that I want to give them a nod of thanks in no particular order: Steven and Nancy Spruill, Latrice and Ken Innes, Jason and Sunni Brock, Rhonda Blackmon Walton, Heather Fish, Sharon Turner, William F. Nolan, Cheryl Burcham, Jane Naccarato, Scott Connors, Damian Wild, Richard Chizmar and Brian Freeman and everyone at Cemetery Dance Publications, Emma Pulitzer and everyone at Open Road Integrated Media, Sharon Lawson and Anthony Rivera at Grey Matter Press, Fred and Lois Rose, and I’m probably forgetting someone because that just seems to be how I role in middle age. My life is a better place with you in it. I owe everything to my readers, the people who've been reading me for decades, the newcomers who just found me, and everyone in between. I know from my experience with them online and at conventions that my readership includes some of the kindest, most generous people imaginable. Thank you for everything. As always, I'm grateful to Dawn for putting up with me for another year, for sharing her life with me for the last 27 wonderful years.<br /><br />I hope 2016 brings you everything you need, as well as a bunch of stuff you don’t need but really want. Stay healthy, take good care of the people in your life, and read more horror fiction. Happy New Year!</span><br />
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<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-39536838975033878922015-12-21T03:17:00.002-08:002015-12-21T03:17:50.412-08:00Celebrating the Holidays Under a Chinese Curse: A Cranky, Rambling December Blog Post<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You’ve no doubt heard the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” It’s a curse because “interesting times,” while fun to read about much later, are often hell to live through. Reading about the French Revolution or the Holocaust or the United States Civil War is radically different — and infinitely safer — than experiencing them firsthand.<br /><br />Well, we’re living through some interesting times right now. Somebody has slapped that curse on our ass, and it has stuck. Don’t believe me? Three words: President Donald Trump. Hey, get used to them because you might be <i>saying</i> them a year from now. A month or six weeks ago, I would have laughed at that suggestion, but now I can’t because too many people are buying what he’s selling.<br /><br />Trump talks about being president the way drunk frat boys talk about being president, and the worse he gets, the higher his numbers go. That human flame war has turned political debates into ratings bonanzas. Have you noticed? The media are now reporting the ratings of political debates the way they report the ratings of the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards telecast. With people getting more extreme in both politics and religion in the last couple of decades, elections were already getting weird. But Donald Trump has turned this election into a slimy reality TV show that has WAY too much reality in it, because this rhinestone rodeo clown is not going away and people from both ends of the partisan spectrum are cheering him on.<br /><br />Once he wins the primary, I’m guessing he’ll choose as his running mate someone like Omarosa or Martha Stewart, just to show everybody how much he loves women, and then he’ll spend the rest of the campaign commenting on her various body parts. Upon winning the presidential election, he’ll bring in a team of contractors to turn the White House into a gold-plated Trump palace. He’ll turn the gift shop into a casino, install an obstacle course in the White House tour and turn it into a reality TV competition on Fox. I’d give it two months before he’d have us at war with every other country on the planet. And it wouldn’t be for any of the standard geopolitical reasons, it would snowball out of control over something really stupid, like Trump insulting a world leader’s wife, or telling Angela Merkel she looks like a Minion.<br /><br />Inspired by the popular fireside chats of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Trump would have a weekly fireside chat, but it would be on TV instead of radio, with a live studio audience and a band, and the fire would be a pile of burning books. It would be the Koran on the first episode, but then he would extend it to books about the Koran, books written by Muslims, books in which Muslims are portrayed favorably, and he would just keep going until he ran out of Muslim books and started in on everything Mexican.<br /><br />Trump would be a disastrous president, but I understand his popularity. People are angry and scared. All they see are problems that are getting worse and causing more problems and they don’t see them being fixed or even addressed because the people in positions of power are too busy doing other things that often make no sense, but that’s OK, because those things really have nothing to do with us and everything to do with big-money interests. People are terrified and pissed off and here comes Moneybags McShowbiz with his bluster and his unfiltered bloviating and that thing that lives on top of his head, and people hear things coming from his mouth that they’ve been thinking but have been afraid to say. They’re looking for solutions to their problems, but with none of those handy, most are angry enough to take scapegoats instead (unfortunately, all too many people don’t know the difference between the two), and Trump has been handing those out like candy on Halloween.<br /><br />Good leaders appeal to the best in us. Those who appeal to the worst in us, as Trump does, do not have our best interests at heart, and while they may lead us, history shows that it’s always in the wrong direction.<br /><br />But, hey, they make for great TV!<br /><br />Yes, interesting times. Presidential candidates who sound like they’re running for the position of dictator or king, terrorists, both foreign and domestic, crap falling out of the sky, both space rocks and space junk, twisted little snots shooting people because they can’t get laid, — it sounds like a goddamned <i>video game</i>, but we call it home.<br /><br />The genres of horror and crime lost a powerful voice when Tom Piccirilli left us all too soon in 2015. We lost Wes Craven, the man who took us to Elm Street. And Spock died. <i>Spock</i>.<br /><br />Not only is David Letterman gone, which is enough to make me lose the will to live, but late-night talk shows have been replaced with children’s programming. Instead of acerbic wit, we now get obnoxious games and karaoke and videos from YouTube. Craig Ferguson has been replaced on <i>The Late Late Show</i> by the single most annoying human being currently drawing breath on this planet. First, CBS conducted a search for the most annoying person in the United States, and you <i>know</i> that had to go on for a while because there’s no shortage of them in this country. But so serious and determined were they that even America’s most annoying did not meet their rigid standards. They had to import an annoying guy from the UK. But it was worth the effort because James Corden plunges to new depths of “annoying” previously undreamed of by even the most daring irritants. Every night in front of the camera appears to be his first as he shouts every word in a whiny, pleading voice that suggests he may burst into tears if you don’t absolutely love everything he does. After years as a regular viewer of THE LATE, LATE SHOW, I have been unable to get through a single episode from beginning to end. He’s been so successful at annoying the hell out of everyone during his first five months that CBS has extended his contract all the way to 2020. Because apparently the earth has passed through some invisible membrane into a dimension of wall-to-wall shit.<br /><br />And now, like the contents of Fibber McGee’s closet (Google it, kids), the holidays are upon us again. But this year, I’m not feeling it. It seems like we just put the Christmas decorations away a few months ago, and now Christmas is this week. This year, the decorations and crowds and music are more of an annoyance than anything else. Does that mean I’ve finally grown up?<br /><br />Normally, the new year brings a lot of promise. This year . . . not so much. According to all the radio advertisements, we should be building bunkers and filling them with survivalist food to hold us over through the apocalypse. And the programs between the commercial breaks allow us to pick the apocalypse of our choice. You want a socialist hellscape with piles of skulls in the killing fields? Listen to Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or a host of others. How about aliens? Or mind-controlled enslavement to the Illuminati? Or maybe you prefer Planet X slamming into us? For those, tune in to George Noory, Clyde Lewis, David Shrader, or a host of others. How about a totalitarian Christian theocracy in which you’re taxed for not going to church, homosexuals are executed, and atheists and believers in false religions are thrown into prisons or work camps? There’s no end to the supply of religious radio shows calling for that. You want informative talk? Casual conversation on relatable topics? Fuck you, we’re in the Shit Dimension now and we don’t do that sort of thing here. If it doesn’t make you angry or afraid or both, it’s <i>crap</i>!<br /><br />I apologize if this Christmas post has been too negative for you, but I refuse to post trigger warnings. Maybe I’ll do a better job of catching the holiday spirit next year. This year, I’m going to try to stay low and keep my mouth shut. I hope you have a Merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a lovely solstice — whatever you celebrate. And if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness and don’t celebrate anything, have a nice day. But to be safe, you might want to buy and put away some canned food. And maybe a gun or two.<br /><br />Happy Apocalypse.<br /><br /></span><br />
RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-36789081691073853532015-10-31T01:51:00.000-07:002015-10-31T01:51:17.622-07:00The Maybe-Not-So-Happy Halloween<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have not posted a word in this space for months, but what kind of horror writer would I be if I let Halloween pass without a blog post? Some health problems have disrupted my productivity, so when I’m able to write, I focus on work. As a result, <i>Preposterous Twaddlecock</i> has been neglected.<br /><br />It’s the spooky season again, and we’re doing the things we do at Halloween time — decorating the porch, watching our favorite horror movies, convincing the neighbor kids that Michael Myers is real and will be coming through the neighborhood on Halloween, just like Santa visiting on Christmas Eve, and then watching them run home screaming. I’m noticing, however, that people do not seem quite as enthused about the holiday as usual. They’re going through the motions, trying to get into the spirit, but I get the feeling it’s not working this year.<br /><br />I don’t think it’s just me. A number of people have expressed this feeling to me, and I have to admit, I’m experiencing it myself. At first, I thought it was age. I’m getting older, the years fly by faster, and it seems like we just did Halloween, didn’t we? But the more I’ve looked around and talked to others, the more I’ve come to see that the world is not in a very good mood right now. Things are not going well for people, no matter what happy stuff they’ve been posting on their Facebook pages.<br /><br />The economy sucks and everyone has financial problems. It seems there’s been a lot of sickness and death among the people to whom I am connected, whether personally or online. Good friends are losing parents, siblings, lovers, and others to sickness or suicide. The horror community has lost a painful number of talented people in the last few years.<br /><br />We are inundated with bad news, and sometimes it isn’t even news at all, just rumor or speculation or a story somehow related to the Kardashians posing as news that we ABSOLUTELY MUST WATCH! An asteroid is headed our way, or we’re on the verge of war, or Ebola has broken out somewhere and might be spreading. And for crying out loud don’t turn on the radio or somebody will start yelling at you about politics or religion or about how the butt-probing reptilian aliens are farming Earth for meat. Every time we turn around, someone is saying the world is about to end, or we’re facing God’s judgment because the gays are getting married, or there’s civil unrest and America’s sure to fall, or all the animals are going extinct, or all the money is gone and now Oprah has to take care of everyone. We’re being watched, our personal information is being collected and stored and sold, privacy is a thing of the past, and, whatever you do, don’t get sick with anything <i>too</i> complicated because your doctor has to see 60 people a day just to stay in business and he doesn’t have time for that shit. People are getting ruder, meaner, uglier. In that kind of environment, it becomes difficult to enjoy much of anything.<br /><br />Simply observing all of this is depressing, never mind being part of it. I see online friends losing loved ones and the pain and sadness radiate from my screen like heat from a furnace. I never know how to respond, what to say; nothing seems adequate or appropriate or sufficient, so I usually end up saying nothing.<br /><br />I wish I had some kind of solution to offer, some balm that would make all of us feel better. I don’t think that exists. It’s as if the atmosphere has been poisoned and we’re all breathing it in. (No, I’m not talking about “chemtrails,” I’m being metaphorical.) I have no answers. I can only tell you what I’ve been trying to do.<br /><br />When I’m feeling depressed, my natural reaction is to read or watch something that reflects that feeling. I don’t mean that I wallow in it, but in that state of mind things that are upbeat or that actively attempt to uplift can feel false, hollow, even annoying. If I’m feeling sad and pop <i>Requiem for a Dream</i> into the DVD player, it doesn’t mean that I want to <i>stay</i> sad, it means that <i>Requiem for a Dream</i> is the color of the room in which I am temporarily locked and feels the most comfortable. Lately, I’ve been trying something different by going in the other direction. I might have <i>felt</i> a lot like <i>Requiem for a Dream</i>, but I started reaching for <i>Caddyshack</i>. It did not work at first. Not right away. A little persistence, though, was rewarding.<br /><br />I’m not saying that a comedy movie will get rid of all your problems or that laughter will make everything better. It won’t. But when we’re ill we need treatment. Laughter is a good way of treating inner illnesses. No, it’s not appropriate at any old time, and there are times when we have no laughter in us. But at some point, we all feel the need to turn away from our pain or despair because we become exhausted by it.<br /><br />Charlie Chaplin wrote “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” I think that is true across the board. In my own life, I’m getting better at stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. That has not always been easy for me because I’ve lived so much of my life inside my own head. That’s true of all writers to a certain degree, but from an early age I think I spent more time there than most. Before one can see the bigger picture, one must first climb outside of one’s own head and look around, and I've found that takes determination and discipline — more than I have, sometimes. But if you can get yourself into the habit of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, life is, even at its darkest, quite funny in one way or another most of the time.<br /><br />I hope this doesn’t come off as trite. All I can say is that it has helped me of late. Depending on how I feel, I sometimes limit or temporarily sever my exposure to the media — news, or what passes for it these days, is either depressing, infuriating, insulting, or all of the above, and any valuable, useful, or encouraging information that seeps through is probably a coincidence or a mistake. And don’t even get me <i>started</i> on the endless presidential election and this greedy, grasping collection of yammering con artists and buffoons being paraded in front of us to create the illusion that we have a “choice” for president. The only thing worse than the candidates are the empty-headed, ratings-hungry, click-baiting meat puppets that have replaced our press in the United States who cover them as if they’re covering a fucking beauty pageant and wouldn’t know a substantial, relevant question if somebody wrapped one in barbed wire and shoved it right up their—<br /><br />Look, just don’t get me started, OK?<br /><br />All I’m saying is that I find myself looking for laughs a lot more these days. Most of the time, in fact. I’ve learned to look for them even when I do not feel like I want them because I know that can be changed, and I am the only one who can change it. I sometimes find laughs in places where other people do not think they should be found, but, hey, you can’t please everybody. I do know that laughing does things to the body and mind, all good. It changes the way you feel, the way you see things. Even though it may not feel like it and won’t be easy at first, you can teach yourself how to decide that you’d rather be laughing, and then do it.<br /><br />We live in a time in which people who are so impoverished that they’ve been reduced to begging are demonized while we spend nearly seven billion dollars a year on a holiday that has at its center the tradition of children going door to door and essentially begging for candy. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t laugh about stuff like that, I will never stop screaming.<br /><br />If you’re going through a painful time right now, keep an eye open for that point at which you’re able to laugh, and when it comes, take advantage of it. Don’t pay attention to others who may think you shouldn’t be laughing. When the time is right for you, find something funny. Being able to laugh is a sign that you’re on the road back from wherever you’ve been.<br /><br />Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that <i>everything</i> is bad. It’s not. I don’t want to get <i>too</i> bleak. William Shatner’s still alive. Star Wars fans have <i>The Force Awakens</i> to look forward to. This is the best time of year for anyone who likes pumpkin spice in <i>anything</i>. Stephen King has a new collection coming soon. There are still cats and dogs. We have some new episodes of <i>The X-Files</i> in our near future. Everything is changing color for the fall, and think of all the delicious produce! There will be a lot of candy floating around tonight, and first thing tomorrow, all the stores will start playing nothing but Christmas music all the time! Well ... OK, I admit that last one isn’t too thrilling. But don’t worry because Thanksgiving is right around the corner and we have that big dinner to look forward to, when we’ll see all the relatives and—<br /><br />Wait, we’re going backwards, here. Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead.<br /><br />Have a happy Halloween.<br /><br /></span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-7212172077836517772015-04-11T02:30:00.000-07:002015-04-11T17:36:10.749-07:00The Brick Through the Window and the Gibbering Crazies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am often asked what scares me. I scare people for a living with horror fiction, so the question is a natural one and I hear it a lot. The answer is simple:<br /><br />Crazy scares me. You cannot reason with crazy. It is impenetrable. You cannot talk crazy out of being crazy. It will not listen to you and it does not care what you want. Crazy just keeps coming. Crazy scares the shit out of me.<br /><br />I’m sure there are some who would scold me for using the word “crazy” instead of something less insulting or confrontational, like the term “mental illness.” But I’m not talking about mental illness. There are many people who suffer from mental illness and have to live every day with that misunderstood, stigmatized burden. But they are not necessarily crazy. Crazy is something altogether different.<br /><br />Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m not getting enough sleep, but there seems to be more crazy around than ever before. It comes in a variety of stripes, flavors and sizes, and sometimes it’s so difficult to spot that it can sneak up on you. Other times, crazy is plain as day and easy to see coming, although it’s seldom easy to get rid of once it arrives.<br /><br />On the night of Monday, March 30, my wife Dawn and I sat down to watch <i>The Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber</i>. I had forgotten it was on that night and we tuned in about 40 minutes late. A few minutes later, we heard shouting and screaming outside. It was a comfortable evening, even at about 10:40 p.m., and our front door was open with the security screen closed. I got up and hobbled to the door (I have a bad hip that’s quite painful when I get up) and looked outside.<br /><br />Our neighbor Megan from the house directly across the street was running up our sloped lawn holding her Chihuahua in her arms, with a skinny young man on her heels, shouting at her. I told Dawn to call 911, then tried to figure out if I’d seen the guy before — you’ll find his picture at the top of this post — and the next thing I knew, they were both on the porch, right outside the door, and he was screaming at her.<br /><br />“That house is changing!” he shouted as he pointed at Megan’s house across the street. “Look at it! <i>Look at it</i>! You’re fuckin’ doin’ that!” he screamed at Megan. “It’s gotta fuckin’ stop! Make it stop!” Then he pointed at our house. “Now, make this house mine, right now! I want this house! <i>MAKE THIS HOUSE MINE RIGHT NOW</i>!”<br /><br />Crazy had come to our door, and it had a hostage.<br /><br />In a heartbeat, everything changed. The pain in my hip was gone and I no longer cared that I was missing the roast on TV because things had gotten dangerous in an instant, and I was, as the kids say, hella scared.<br /><br />Megan was standing beside the door, her back pressed against the wall, when he punched her in the face, knocked her glasses off and sent her Chihuahua tumbling through the air into the night. I didn't know it then, but it was the second time he'd punched her that night. She had walked down to a convenience store a few blocks away and he had followed her home. When she wouldn't take him into her house, he'd punched her, then she'd run across the street to our place for help.<br /><br />I knew I had to get Megan into the house, but I also knew that if I let that screaming lunatic in, we would have an even bigger problem. I waited for the right moment. I cannot tell you how I knew it was the right moment because I don’t even remember getting Megan through the door. All I know now is that she was on the porch one second and inside the house with the door locked the next. And Screamy McNutjob was still on the porch, screaming in my face through the screen.<br /><br />He went on shouting gibberish — “Make this house mine right now!” — and we waited for the police to arrive. Time slowed down to an interminable crawl. It seemed we were there listening to that nutjob forever, but it was, in reality, a very short period of time.<br /><br />The screamer gibbered on outside. He threatened to kill Megan, and because she was in the house with us, he threatened to kill us, too, before taking our house. He <i>really</i> wanted our house. He seemed to think it belonged to his mother, that it was “one of her mansions.” See? He thought our house was a mansion. Crazy!<br /><br />Dawn suggested I close the front door, and I did. The screaming continued outside, and a moment later, a brick exploded through our kitchen window.<br /><br />I needed a weapon. All the knives were in the kitchen and the floor was now covered with shattered glass. But we had a decorative fantasy knife on a small stand in the living room (pictured above). It had been a gift from friends a couple of Christmases ago. It was for looks, not meant to be used as a weapon, but it would have to do. I quickly removed the knife from its stand and tore the protective strip of plastic from the blade. With the knife held in my fist, I stood beside the window and waited for him to climb through.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">His skinny arms came through first as he continued to babble and threaten. I swung the knife upward as hard as I could and stabbed him in the upper part of his left arm. He stopped yammering long enough to shout “Ow!” and backed off.<br /><br />By then, our neighbors were converging in our front yard. They had heard the brick crash through our window — a sound I wish I could stop hearing — and began shouting at him.<br /><br />He crossed the porch and went to our living room window. It has double panes, and he put his fist through the screen and the outer pane as the neighbors shouted louder. He returned to the kitchen window and started to climb through again. And once again, I swung the knife up and stabbed him hard, this time in his left forearm. He backed off a second time.<br /><br />Then I saw the lights of the police car. I have never been hit so hard by a sense of relief in my entire life. It almost knocked me over. They had to zap that methed-out lunatic <i>twice</i> with a taser to get him to go down.<br /><br />Once 19-year-old Philip Ault was in custody, Officer Tyler Finch came inside and asked us what happened while Sgt. Dave Price talked to our neighbors. Officer Finch said they’d seen a lot of Ault but never had enough on him to put him away. Ault had changed that by committing enough felonies on our porch to become a guest of the state for a while.<br /><br />We’ve seen a lot of horrifying stories in the news lately about police abusing their authority and a lot of people are very upset about it. Including me. People <i>should</i> be upset about it and those police officers should be brought to justice. But those are not the only stories. Our experience with Sgt. Price and Officer Finch of the Anderson Police Department was wonderful. I can’t remember the last time I was as happy to see anything as I was to see that police car drive up to the house.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> The story was <a href="http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/woman-talks-about-attack-being-saved-by-neighbors/32142532" target="_blank"><b>covered on the local news</b></a> and discussed on<b> <a href="http://www.thehorrorshowwithbriankeene.com/" target="_blank"><i>The Horror Show with Brian Keene</i></a></b> The word “hero” has been lobbed around, but I can assure you that nothing about it felt heroic.<br /><br />We often hear that people don’t know their neighbors anymore, that everyone keeps to themselves and no one steps up to get involved and help. This is not true of everyone. Dawn and I are fortunate to have wonderful neighbors. In our neighborhood, we watch out for each other, keep an eye on each other’s houses if someone is gone, and are available to help if someone needs a hand. Our neighbors are good people all and we have never been more grateful to have them than we were that night.<br /><br />When they heard the brick go through our window, Lois (whose husband Fred was out of town, or he would’ve been out there, too), Nick, Chris, and Daryl came to our yard and began shouting at Ault, trying to draw his attention away from us. Ault, of course, was beyond distraction. He was so far gone on meth that he was not registering his surroundings much, if at all. Once Ault was out of the way, Chris and Nick immediately boarded up our window with wood and nails they provided. We are extremely grateful to all of our neighbors who showed up (I’m not sure who was out there because I didn’t step outside) and things might have turned out differently had they not been there. I would also like to thank Ken and Latrice Innes for the knife. It came in handy.<br /><br />When you hear people say that no one helps, no one gets involved anymore, don’t believe them. It isn’t true. Don’t give in to that mythology. Don’t make it a self-fulfilling prophecy by assuming that those around you fit that description, or by fitting that description yourself. The worse things get, the more we need each other. Each other is all we've got. Don’t lose sight of that.<br /><br />Philip Ault was the obvious kind of crazy, the kind you can recognize immediately. But not all crazy is obvious.<br /><br />The day of this writing, I made the mistake of commenting in a discussion thread on Facebook. The discussion was about the ongoing horrifying stories of police brutality we keep seeing. I briefly told of our experience with the local police. I shouldn’t have done that. I was told that all of this police brutality is the fault of the <i>good</i> law enforcement officers, too — like the ones who came to our rescue. Shame on me for expressing gratitude that the police arrived promptly and dispatched the guy who wanted to kill us. How dare I! But the most egregious response came from a veteran genre writer who drove crazy off a cliff with this gem:<br /><br />"Ray, I'm so relieved no grandchild or beloved pet was killed by those lovely cops, and there was no one present they were keen on raping."<br /><br />You see, Ray, the threat wasn’t the guy trying to get into your house and kill you and your wife and your neighbor. The <i>real</i> threat was the <i>police</i>! <i>That's</i> who you should’ve been afraid of, Ray! But instead, you’re <i>praising</i> the police! <i>Heretic</i>! <i>Infidel</i>! <b><i>WIIIITCH</i></b>! <i><b>BUUUURN HIIIIM</b></i>!<br /><br />This, as far as I’m concerned, represents an abandonment of rational thought. It was gibberish. There were people in that thread gibbering every bit as much as Philip Ault on our porch. To borrow a brilliant term coined by writer Patrick Freivald, I was “harshing their gibber.” Gibbering people don't like that.<br /><br />Aside from the fact that the writer’s comment was pretty vile — simply on a conversational level, it reminded me of monkeys flinging their own poop — it was an example of another kind of crazy. The kind of crazy that walks among us. It doesn’t run around screaming and throwing bricks through windows, it’s the kind that sits right next to you and starts a pleasant conversation. I responded angrily, but then thought better of it and deleted my comment. Then I deleted the writer and original poster from my Facebook list and got the hell out of there. These are people who have become what they claim to hate most. I don’t need their company.<br /><br />People who think that <i>all</i> of the police are monsters and lash out at anyone who suggests otherwise meet my criteria for crazy. (For the record, <i>all</i> of <i>any</i> group is not <i>anything</i>. Generalizations are bad, mmmkay?). Anyone who would respond the way that writer responded to me fits my definition of crazy. And crazy scares the shit out of me. Such people have terminated their individual relationships with reality and are now constructing a new reality made up of their favorite prejudices and generalizations. I don’t want to be anywhere <i>near</i> that reality. From now on, my “delete” finger will be more active on Facebook.<br /><br />We are living in very weird times. If you have an opinion that is reasoned, complex, and contains nuance, you’d best keep it to yourself because in the new reality, reason and complexity do not exist. Everything is black and white. People and ideas and things are either good or bad, they CANNOT be marbled with both. Gray areas do not exist anymore, and if you suggest that they do, you will be pilloried by the gibbering crazies. You’re expected to pick a side and fight.<br /><br />Well, I’ve got other things to do, so you’ll have to excuse me.<br /><br />In the nearly two weeks that have passed since our visit from Mr. Ault, Dawn and I have found that we do not feel as safe as we used to. We’re a little jumpy, and the dark has taken on a familiar childhood dread.<br /><br />Crazy is out there. It’s also among your Facebook friends. Maybe even among your personal friends or your own family.<br /><br />Stay safe. And try not to go crazy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One more thing: Megan's Chihuahua Dax hit the ground running and headed straight home. He's fine. </span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-86147033029592189192014-12-26T23:30:00.001-08:002015-01-06T16:23:30.017-08:00Year End Clearance Blog 2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Did <i>anyone</i> have a good year? A show of hands, please. Yeah, I thought so. I knew I couldn’t be the only one who wants to drive a stake through the heart of 2014.<br /><br />It was bleak and depressing, with a lot of in-your-face violence and death — it was a goddamned Lars Von Trier movie! — much of which has been politicized to further divide a country already at each others' throats. There’s been a lot of loss, a lot of fear and anxiety. There have been some good things, too, of course. Landing a probe on a comet was pretty damned spectacular. But somehow, I don’t think it’s the kind of year that will be remembered for its positives. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to turn on the TV shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve to see a bloated and rotting Guy Lombardo leading his cadaverous orchestra in “Auld Lang Syne” — it’s just been that kind of year.<br /><br />After a year of severe GI problems in 2013, I had a couple of good months, then the symptoms returned and worsened. It has disrupted every aspect of my life, especially my ability to work. This means that I am still behind in all the things I was behind in before. My doctor has been ordering tests, which, so far, have shown nothing abnormal. An ultrasound and CT scan showed nothing abnormal, and I'm waiting for the result of some blood work. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you’re waiting for POKER NIGHT, I hope you can be just a little more patient. I’m working on it, but I’m working sporadically and slowly. The end is near. I’m very grateful for the patience of those waiting for the book, especially Zach Powell of KWP, who has been so generous.<br /><br />Hey, it could be worse. I could be Bill Cosby.<br /><br />This is going to be a short blog post, but I want you to continue it in the comments, and I’ll join you there. Tell me about the best movies you saw and books you read this year. What movies or books were big disappointments? Discuss!<br /><br />I hope everyone had a great Christmas and I’m sure we’re all hoping for improvements in 2015.</span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-4971894467414831632014-08-29T00:32:00.001-07:002014-08-30T16:44:23.661-07:00Facebook: Internet Time Vampire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Facebook holds tremendous appeal for professional writers. It allows us something we don’t normally have much: contact with other people. Writing is solitary work. We are typically holed up in an office every day (or night, depending on one’s schedule). Unlike a regular job, there are no coworkers, no sociable lunch or coffee breaks, only the writer, the keyboard, and the screen.<br /><br />Then Facebook came into our lives. Suddenly, we had access to old friends, new friends, total strangers who share our interests, other writers we’ve admired from afar, and a lot of smart, funny, entertaining people. Oh, sure, there are the people from high school you hoped never see or think of again in your life, the health food hucksters posting memes that claim eating two handfuls of cashews has the same affect as taking a Prozac (I’m looking at <i>you</i>, Dave Sommers and Raw Food Family, you lying sacks of shit), and the spammers who send you messages in broken English promising friendship, sex, or a buttload of money you’ve inherited from someone in a foreign land to whom you did not know you were related in exchange for a nominal bank fee (“nominum banks feet”). But you can get rid of them easily enough. The real draw is all those fun and interesting people on your friend list. Sure, they aren’t really <i>friend</i> friends because you’ve never met them, but a kind of friendship can develop that often becomes surprisingly significant in your life.<br /><br />Facebook gave me a place to promote my books. That’s why I opened an account in the first place. But then I started getting to know some of the people and enjoying their online company. This is a good thing. But, also, it’s a bad thing.<br /><br />The reason writing is solitary work is that without the solitary part, NO WORK GETS DONE!<br /><br />As previously stated, I started out just promoting my books. I tried not to promote <i>too</i> much because I know how annoying and tiresome that can be, so between promotional posts, I occasionally would interact with people. Well, it was “occasionally” at <i>first</i>.<br /><br />Usually, my birthday passes quietly and mostly unnoticed, and the older I get, the more fine I am with that arrangement. Unless my wife has the day off from work, I usually spend it alone and working. But on Facebook, suddenly a whole lot of people were wishing me happy birthday. Some of them even sent me gifts! I was surprised by the tremendous lift I got from this. It was a real shot in the arm. I made it a habit to wish happy birthday to everyone on my list every day, because who <i>doesn't</i> enjoy being wished happy birthday? But after I’d been doing this for a while, I didn’t want to stop because that seemed like a kind of jerky move to me. I had wished happy birthday to some people, but I would be ignoring others. Keep that in mind because I’m going to come back to it.<br /><br />When Robin Williams committed suicide, it began a discussion on Facebook about depression, bipolar disorder, and suicide. The number of people among my Facebook friends who suffer from, in varying degrees, these and other similar troubling problems is astonishing — but it’s not really surprising. These problems haunt a significant number of people in the overall population. Prone to depression myself, I am among them. This is extremely relevant in light of something revealed about Facebook earlier in the summer of 2014.<br /><br />Facebook along with Cornell University and the University of California - San Francisco — <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/06/facebook_unethical_experiment_it_made_news_feeds_happier_or_sadder_to_manipulate.html" target="_blank">conducted an experiment on 700,000 Facebook users</a> without their knowledge. The purpose was to study “emotional contagion through social networks.” Here’s an excerpt from the <i>Slate</i> article linked above (please read the article) by Katy Waldman:<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>“They tweaked the algorithm by which Facebook sweeps posts into members’ news feeds, using a program to analyze whether any given textual snippet contained positive or negative words. Some people were fed primarily neutral to happy information from their friends; others, primarily neutral to sad. Then everyone’s subsequent posts were evaluated for affective meanings.<br /><br />“The upshot? Yes, verily, social networks can propagate positive and negative feelings!<br /><br />“The other upshot: Facebook intentionally made thousands upon thousands of people sad.”</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(It’s worth noting, I think, that Cornell was one of 44 U.S. universities and colleges and scores of prisons, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies that participated in the U.S. government’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra" target="_blank">Project MKUltra</a>, which conducted dangerous and sometimes life-altering and even fatal mind experiments on an unknown number of “subjects” without their knowledge or consent using LSD and other drugs, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and various forms of verbal and sexual abuse and torture. Fucking with people’s minds without their consent is nothing new at Cornell. You may find this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay8jtEUKC1Y" target="_blank">hard to believe</a>, but I assure you it’s not a crazy conspiracy theory, it’s a matter of public record.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Researchers from Facebook, Cornell, and UCSF found that, yes, they <i>can</i> alter moods. Does that mean they <i>should</i>? I don’t think the experiment involved that particular question.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Given the number of people on Facebook who suffer from a variety of mental and emotional vulnerabilities, this is rather disturbing, and it seems potentially dangerous. But Facebook simply sniffs at such nonsense and claims we all gave consent when we agreed to the terms of service. (If you read the <i>Slate</i> article, you’ll see that this claim may not be entirely accurate in this case.) Add to that everything we’ve learned about the U.S. government’s massive surveillance of our internet activities and given its past history of experimenting on unknowing "subjects" and, even if you’re <i>not</i> paranoid, it’s a little creepy.<br /><br />I’m not trying to scare anyone, I’m simply pointing out that Facebook isn’t just a “social network.” It has become an active part of the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people. And even when it’s not fucking with our psyches, it’s doing something else that’s just as significant:<br /><br />It is sucking time out of our lives like a thirsty vampire on a neck.<br /><br />I’ve had some health problems in recent years, and I’ve found that, when I’m feeling unwell, or if I’m experiencing stress or overwhelmed by day-to-day worries, I definitely should <i>not</i> be on Facebook. Does knowing that stop me? No. Sometimes when I’m not feeling well and I’m finding it hard to concentrate, Facebook can be a tempting go-to activity <i>instead</i> of pushing on with work and trying to write. This is a bad thing. When I’m not feeling well, I tend to be bothered by things that normally wouldn’t bother me and I can become irritable, sometimes to the point of lashing out at others who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.<br /><br />For example, after I'd gotten into the habit of wishing everyone happy birthday every day and it had become a habit, there were days when I would get preoccupied and forget until the end of the day. Did I dismiss this and try harder to remember the next day? No. I felt <i>horrible</i> about, sometimes horrible enough for it to alter my mood for hours. I worried that people would notice I’d wished happy birthday to others but not to them and would think I had something against them. If you’re familiar with how Facebook works, you know this is a ridiculous concern. I knew that, too. But did that stop me from feeling bad about it? No.<br /><br />Even when Facebook is not intentionally messing your head, Facebook can mess with your head. <br /><br />I’m not saying Facebook is entirely a bad thing. It allows us to stay in touch with people we rarely or never see in person, connects us to new and interesting people, and can be used for productive networking. But unless approached with some caution and restraint, it <i>can</i> be a bad thing. And if you’re a writer who needs solitude to work, inviting a few hundred or a few thousand people into your workplace when you <i>should</i> be working is not a good idea.<br /><br />As I write this, I have temporarily deactivated my Facebook account. I just need a little time to reset my brain, some days and nights in which logging onto Facebook is not a tempting diversion or, worse, something I feel <i>obligated</i> to do. If you find that Facebook has become the tail that wags your dog, you may want to do the same. If you find that difficult to do, keep one little fact in mind:<br /><br />To Facebook, you are a lab rat.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-6114451204251241592014-08-01T02:32:00.000-07:002014-08-01T12:57:43.818-07:00My Summer So Far<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It’s been more than a month since my last blog post, so I think I’ve firmly established the fact that I am not a regular blogger. Lately, I’ve been trying to put a dent in a pile of backed-up work, and I haven’t been popping my head out of the hole much. Among other things, I’ve been researching the geological history of Washington state. And my brain hurts.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">People often make a mistaken assumption about writers. Someone who can write books, the assumption goes, must be brilliant. The people who make this assumption also seem to forget how many books have been written by Kardashians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Granted, the chances that any of the Kardashians actually <i>wrote</i> any of the books that bear their names are pretty slim. In fact, if I weren’t a writer and actually had a lot of money to wager, I’d bet heavily against those chances. Maybe the Kardashians were a bad example, but you get my point.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My experience has been that writing often makes me feel pretty dumb because it’s always reminding me of how much I <i>don't know</i>.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While researching Washington state geology, I encountered what appeared to me to be a different language. The jargon, the terminology — after a few paragraphs, my head felt ready to explode. I was writing a prologue that didn’t need to be very long, but somehow I had to give the impression that I had a handle on the subject matter. With zero knowledge of the field of geology, I found that impossible to do in the time I had. The suggestion was made that I “fake it,” a notion that made me freeze up because I didn’t know how to fake something I didn’t understand. I knew what I wanted that prologue to be, I knew what I wanted it to do. But that would require a <i>lot</i> more reading and learning and I just didn’t have the time for that. I didn’t write the prologue I had in mind, but I think I accomplished what I needed to do just the same.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you think you’re pretty smart, maybe a little above average, try writing a novel. It will make you aware of the oceans of things you don’t know, of the mountains of information that you may be able to access but not necessarily <i>understand</i>, of all the little day-to-day details of life you pay no attention to and about which you know so little. In short, writing a novel can make you feel like an idiot.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is the first time I’ve worked on multiple projects at once. In the past, I’ve always worked on one at a time because each one so totally consumed my brain that I couldn’t even <i>think</i> about working on anything else. Hell, sometimes I've gotten so wrapped up in a book, I have a hard time functioning without Dawn around to remind me to put on my pants.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One project at a time is no longer possible, so I’m training myself to rotate projects. It hasn’t been quite as difficult as I expected because I’ve found that as I get older, I’m not as intensely focused as I used to be. One drawback of that is that I’m more easily distracted, but a benefit is that I can move more easily between projects. That has enabled me to write several short stories, work on an unfinished novel, and start a new one all in one summer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Since my last blog post, I have not found a cure for my insomnia and still end up spending the wee hours staring at the TV with sleepy eyes. I’ve seen some good movies.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I remember reading Roger Ebert’s review of <i>Barney's Version</i>, screenwriter Michael Konyves’s adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel, directed by Richard J. Lewis. I wanted to see the movie immediately, but it was playing in selected theaters and none of the theaters in my area had been selected. When we got a free weekend of HBO earlier this year, I recorded the movie, and it’s been on the DVR ever since. I recently watched it late one night.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul Giamatti plays paunchy, balding, cigar-smoking TV producer Barney Panofsky, an unremarkable man who makes some remarkably bad decisions. For example, he walks out of his own wedding reception to follow a beautiful woman, one of the guests he’s just met, all the way to the train station to tell her he’s madly in love with her. But, to be fair, she does turn out to be the love of his life. Ebert summed up the movie beautifully: “<i>Barney's Version</i> tells the story of a man distinguished largely by his flaws and the beautiful woman who loves him in spite of them.” It’s a funny, sad, infuriating movie that’s messy in the same way that life and people are messy. Giamatti, as usual, is outstanding, and Dustin Hoffman is hilarious as Barney’s retired detective father.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Writer-director Sean Durkin’s <i>Martha Marcy May Marlene</i> from 2011 is a quietly disturbing story about a young woman, Martha (Elizabeth Wilson), who escapes the cult she’s been in to go live with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy). She doesn’t tell them she’s been in a cult, and I’m not sure <i>she</i> knows she’s been in a cult. I don’t think the word “cult” is ever spoken in the movie. What we see is the damage done to Martha during the time she spent with the cult, the way the leader, Patrick (John Hawkes), stays with her even though she left him behind. It’s a haunting movie about the effects of mind control, how it changes the way Martha sees herself, others, and the world. Wilson gives a quietly convincing performance that will stay with you.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The best movie I’ve seen in some time is last year’s <i>Prisoners</i>, written by Aaron Guzikowski and directed by Denis Villeneuve. When two little girls disappear, their parents are frantic and the police immediately begin following leads. But when the girls are not found, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) caves under the pressure and kidnaps and tortures a young man he believes is either involved in the kidnaping himself or knows something about it. Meanwhile, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is dealing with evidence, suspects, and the unstable and irrational Dover.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I don’t want to reveal any more than that about the story because I don’t want to deflate the experience for you. <i>Prisoners</i> is best watched cold, knowing as little as possible about it, preferably nothing. It’s the kind of movie that makes you forget you’re watching a movie. It’s not a pleasant experience — it’s disturbing and painful and frightening, it's not light entertainment — but it is definitely a vivid and electric experience. And a hell of a movie.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you’re craving some political soap opera while you wait for the next season of <i>House of Cards</i>, you might want to check out <i>Boss</i> starring Kelsey Grammer as Chicago mayor Tom Kane, a man fighting to retain power while gradually being overtaken by a degenerative neurological disorder that is destroying his mind. It’s a compelling series, but it was cancelled after the second season without resolving its storylines, which is rather frustrating. Grammer was so good for so long in the role of Frasier Crane that it’s still difficult to adjust to him in a different role, but he’s equally good here playing a radically character.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Other than that, my summer so far has been pretty damned hot. Yesterday, Dawn and I went out in the afternoon and the thermometer in her car read 113 degrees. I’m ready for winter already.</span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-61655127733805921312014-06-11T20:46:00.000-07:002014-06-11T20:46:30.041-07:00Professional Wrestling with Monsters<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I saw <i>Godzilla</i> recently. Dawn and I don’t go to movies often these days for a few reasons. The cost, for one. Then there’s the audience, which usually includes a number of people who seem to believe themselves to be alone in their living rooms. And there’s also the fact that we’re just not that interested in the movies Hollywood is turning out lately. But <i>Godzilla</i> was different.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I wonder how many hours of my childhood I spent watching kaiju destroy Japan and each other. Japanese monster movies were common on TV back then, especially on the weekends. On Sunday morning, there was <i>Johnny Sokko and His Giant Robot</i>, and every weekday afternoon there was <i>Ultraman</i>. The 1960s and 1970s were a TV paradise for monster-lovin’ kids.<br /><br />You might remember those two Japanese series, but I’ve found that they weren’t syndicated in all areas because I’ve met a number of people my age who have never heard of them. <i>Ultraman</i> was my favorite. The original series from 1966-67 took place in the 1990s, a decade during which, as we all know now, gigantic monsters and nefarious space aliens were relentlessly screwing with humanity, especially in Japan. With that kind of kaiju fuckery going on all the time, you need a well-equipped team to deal with it, and in <i>Ultraman</i>, that was the United Nations Scientific Investigation Agency (although in the Japanese language version, it was the Science Special Search Party, or SSSP), but I remember the group being referred to simply as the Science Patrol. My favorite quirk of the show was that the members of the Science Patrol frequently would be seen wandering through a field looking for a giant monster, but behaving as if they were looking for a lost contact lens, until one of them suddenly looked up, pointed dramatically, and shouted, “Look! A monstah!”<br /><br /><i>Johnny Sokko and His Giant Robot</i> was similar in that it featured an organization that protected earth from annoying aliens and giant monsters, mechanical or living. In the series, Earth is under constant threat by the Gargoyle Gang, led by the vaguely Cthulhu-like Emperor Guillotine, who issues commands from his undersea fortress. They are constantly battling the force for good in this series, which is the organization known as Unicorn. Johnny Sokko is a little boy who, through a series of outlandish events, winds up in control of a giant robot. Johnny and his robot go to work for Unicorn, and lots of action and adventure result.<br /><br />Both shows were primo entertainment for kids because they worked on kid logic. They were brilliantly designed to appeal to children. The daikaiju feature films had bigger budgets, though, and were the precursor to these television series. But all of this really came from the fertile imagination of a man named Eiji Tsuburaya, who virtually invented the kaiju genre and, for decades, single-handedly protected earth from nasty aliens and giant monsters. Tsuburaya was the special effects wizard behind Godzilla, Ultraman, and a host of giant monsters. He was the godfather of kaiju.<br /><br />I’d made my way through several Godzilla movies before I finally saw the U.S. cut of the 1954 original starring Perry Mason. (Yes, I know it was Raymond Burr, but I’m sorry, back then, Raymond Burr in black-and-white had no other identity for me than Perry Mason.) I had seen Godzilla only in color, and usually fighting with other monsters, so the grim black-and-white movie kind of caught me off guard. I didn’t care for it. The movie was uneven, choppy, and Perry Mason kept popping up to pontificate, which I found annoying, and it threw the whole thing off for me. Years later, I saw the original Japanese cut (under the title GOJIRA) and thought it was a much better movie than the American release. In that movie, of course, Godzilla was a metaphor for the nuclear nightmare that fell on Japan only ten years earlier. I was a little kid. Metaphors didn’t interest me. Monster fights did. <br /><br />I recognized that the movies were terribly silly and I enjoyed mocking the laughable English dubbing. But there were so many things to love about them that it didn’t matter how bad they were.<br /><br />When I watch them now, they look to me like some weird branch of professional wrestling, like the unholy offspring of the WWE and GWAR sent back to the ‘60s in a time machine. The Japanese monster movies I saw most often when I was a kid were essentially professional-wrestling-style matches between guys in rubber suits on miniature sets with explosions and fire, hilarious English dubbing, and music that was overwrought, comical, or both. But if you look a little closer, there’s a lot to admire.<br /><br />I was crazy for puppets and puppetry when I was a kid and I think that had something to do with my attraction to those films, because there’s a lot of puppetry going on in most of them (something I recognized even as a small boy, so they weren’t terribly convincing — but no less engrossing). There’s also a lot of artistry in the miniatures and cinematography, and in those imaginative monsters themselves, the rubber suits that became so colossal and fearsome with some sound effects, music, and a little visual tampering. The visuals did not fool me for a second — I don’t think they fooled anyone — but that makes it all the more significant that I was <i>mesmerized</i> by them. Young people watching those movies today probably would laugh their asses off at the effects. But they would do so having no clue whatsoever as to how powerful and consuming those movies and TV series were to children forty years ago.<br /><br />The thing I remember most vividly about them is that they fired up my imagination like nothing else. They started the gears and cogs of my creativity turning when I was a boy. In fact, they were so stimulating that, while watching them, I was usually drawing or writing. They MADE me create.<br /><br />Some were better than others, and some were absolute dreck, but even the bad ones had their charm. I didn’t watch them for the drama or suspense because there really wasn’t any, and certainly not for the stories because <i>who</i> <i>knew</i> what those people on the screen were actually saying under all that dubbing? I watched for the special effects. Even back then, these were <i>not</i> state-of-the-art effects. They were guys in rubber suits. But somehow ... it all worked. They <i>suggested</i> ... and we imagined the rest.<br /><br />Even when I was laughing at them, mocking them, it didn’t take long for me to fall into those movies like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. They created a goofy world that somehow made sense to a kid, and they were a hell of a lot of fun. My dad, who responded to my taste in television viewing with derisive snorts and sneers, thought Japanese monster movies were absolutely the dumbest things EVER. And yet, even he would fall down that hole with me and get involved if he was in the room when one was on TV.<br /><br />I was especially fond of the movies that starred a whole cast of monsters, like <i>Destroy All Monsters</i> or <i>Godzilla on Monster Island</i>. They were monster free-for-alls. Ghidorah was a big favorite of mine because whenever he was in a movie, a buttload of monsters joined him. And he had three heads on long snake-like necks — how fucking cool is THAT?<br /><br />One of my favorites that did not include Godzilla was <i>War of the Gargantuas</i>. I was fascinated by the tale of two giant, hairy monsters, the brown one docile and friendly, the green one violent and dangerous. I haven’t seen that movie in about forty years, and I prefer it that way. I’m sure I wouldn’t like it now, and I prefer to remember it as the movie I loved as a boy. Decades later, I was shocked to learn that the movie was originally shot as a sequel to <i>Frankenstein Conquers the World</i> ... which is probably my LEAST favorite daikaiju movie.<br /><br />A giant Frankenstein monster? <i>Really</i>? It seems like a bad idea now, but when I was nine ... it <i>still</i> seemed like a bad idea. It conjured mental images of a colossal Boris Karloff in his Frank Pierce makeup bellowing “Fire bad!” as the oil refinery he just stepped on bursts into flaming explosions. I still wince at the notion of combining Mary Shelly’s monster with guys in rubber suits and miniature sets, but I’ve met plenty of people who hold that as their favorite daikaiju (giant Japanese monster movie). It just didn’t work for me. Except as comedy. But did I watch? Are you out of your<i> mind</i>, of <i>course</i> I watched!<br /><br />I have a difficult time making it all the way through one of those movies now. That’s okay because they weren’t made for 51-year-old men, they were made for kids. But after all that time spent in that goofy world, how could I not give the new <i>Godzilla</i> the full treatment by seeing it as it was meant to be seen — on the big screen in 3D?<br /><br />I was kind of excited about seeing the Big Guy on the big screen for the first time, but I have to admit my expectations weren’t very high. They were, however, significantly surpassed. It was much better than Roland Emmerich’s 1998 movie in which an iguanadon, or whatever the hell it was, was foisted onto the public as Godzilla in an unfunny hoax that was appreciated by no one I know.<br /><br />2014's <i>Godzilla</i> shows some respect and affection for the monster’s tradition. It went to some lengths to include engrossing human interaction (although, to be honest, I think it could have tried a little harder, but that's just me being picky). There are no guys in rubber suits, of course, because this is the digital age in which all special effects are small enough to be accomplished in a little computer. I prefer the days when they were actually done in front of the camera by creative people who had to fold, spindle, or mutilate their imaginations to realize their vision. But those in charge of the digital effects for Godzilla were fond enough of the monster’s history to give that CGI beast a look that <i>suggested</i> a guy in a rubber suit. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated that little bone thrown to th</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ose of us who grew up with the monster. It was a big-budget blockbuster movie with familiar modern-day stars, but it managed to conjure the spirit of the daikaiju of my childhood.<br /><br />Come on, admit it. We need our giant monsters! They’re far more threatening than terrorists, they’re much scarier than natural disasters ... but they’re not real. They exist only in our imaginations ... like Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the invisible friends of our childhood. We need those monsters, no matter what shape they take — on the screen or just in our heads — like we needed those childhood imaginary friends. They help us to deal with life’s ugliness — the school shootings, the unemployment rate (the real one, not the one the government is reporting), and the enormous surplus of hatred and vitriol that exists in this country (and on our planet in general).<br /><br />Go ahead, let your daikaiju freak flag fly!</span><br />
<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-47086666306518395202014-05-30T17:42:00.001-07:002014-05-30T17:42:32.068-07:00Climbing Out of the Hole: Some Serious Advice for Writers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I feel like I’ve been living in a hole for the last year and a half. In addition to having throat surgery to remove some precancerous tissue from a vocal cord, I’ve been sick with GI problems that have become, at times, quite severe. I improved after cutting gluten from my diet — believe me, as sick as I was, I rolled my eyes while I was doing it because it has become such a fad. But I have since been diagnosed with celiac disease, which forces me to maintain a gluten-free diet even at the risk of looking like an annoying hipster. I still have some problems that need to be diagnosed, but I think the worst is over. And the worst, for me, was not the GI distress.<br /><br />For a year and a half, I had an increasingly difficult time concentrating. At first, I thought it was simply because I felt so bad. I can write through physical pain (as long as it’s not <i>too</i> intense), but nausea, vomiting, severe cramps, and frequent dashes to the bathroom make it difficult to be creative. I soon realized it was more than that. It wasn’t only disrupting my work, it was making it difficult to read anything or follow a movie or TV show or even hold a conversation. My head was foggy in a way that went beyond merely feeling unwell.<br /><br />I’m sure that was the result of having undiagnosed celiac disease for however long I had it, because it robs you of the nutrients you need to do things like finish a sentence or a thought. Well after I struck gluten from my menu, lab work revealed that my sodium level was alarmingly low. That can cause all kinds of problems, including a decrease in cognition that can range from not being able to concentrate to not being able to remember your name.<br /><br />The result of this is that I have been unable to write. And for someone who’s written every day of his life since he was a child, suddenly being unable to do it is terrifying. Oh, I could type out a paragraph or two, but compared to my normal productivity, that was a joke, and I was unable to maintain the writing enough to tell a story. I managed to write a couple of short stories during this time, but holy <i>crap</i>, was it difficult and it took a horrifyingly long time.<br /><br />That has changed recently. I’m writing again, trying to get back into a productive routine, and I’m ready to tackle projects that have been languishing while I’ve been sick, like the follow-up to <i>Frankenstorm</i>, finishing <i>Poker Night</i> for Kings Way Press, putting together a “Little Book” for Borderlands, and finishing a couple of short stories. A lot of people have been extremely patient and supportive during this time, like Gary Goldstein at Kensington, Zach Powell at KWP, my agent Richard Curtis, Thom Monteleone at Borderlands, and my friends, who have so patiently listened to me gripe about all of this for so long.<br /><br />I’ve managed to get at least one short story out of all this. I’ve had a lot of lab work done lately, including a stool sample. I’ve never done one of those before, and I found that it’s every bit as unpleasant as I always imagined. A couple of days ago, I turned in a story to Jeani Rector, who’s editing a new anthology. It’s called “The Sample” and it’s about the worst experience imaginable with a stool sample. I may not have been able to write much lately, but life never stops providing material for stories.<br /><br />I’ve learned something from this that I want to pass on to other writers, aspiring or otherwise. This is advice commonly given to new writers by veterans, but it applies to all, no matter how much of a veteran you may <i>think</i> you are. This is the advice:<br /><br /><b>WRITE EVERY SINGLE DAY AND DO NOT STOP FOR ANYTHING.</b><br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Create a writing regimen and stick to it. I did for thirty years — until last year. Each day, I felt a little worse and started putting off even <i>attempting</i> to write. This was a colossal mistake. I should have stuck to the routine, I should have kept writing even if all I wrote was “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again.<br /><br />Once you stop, time begins to pass very quickly, even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment. Next thing you know, six months have gone by ... eight months ... a year ... and you haven’t written a goddamned thing. And then fear starts to set in. <i>What if I sit down and try and find that I can't? What if it's all practice and once you stop practicing you lose it? What if I've lost it?</i> Those are dangerous thoughts to have because they can become self-fulfilling prophecies.<br /><br />Writing is a weird and elusive thing. One of the most common reasons people with an interest in writing never do it is that they lack the discipline to make themselves do it every day and stick with a story or book to the end. But I’m here to tell you that even when you <i>have</i> that discipline and you’ve been exercising it every day of your life for a long time, it can so easily be lost. When you have it for a long time and do it every day, you lose your awareness of it. It becomes your life. And if it stops, for whatever reason ... well, if you take your writing seriously (and especially if it’s your livelihood) it can be pretty damned scary.<br /><br />I’m dealing with that right now, and I’ve been scared a lot lately. I have crawled out of the hole to warn you about it. Guard that writing regimen with your life. If you have the discipline to write, know that it’s a rare thing and it’s not anchored in stone. It can be lost.<br /><br />Don’t lose it.</span><br />
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RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-710992892631710362013-12-24T13:12:00.001-08:002013-12-24T13:16:49.350-08:00People at Christmas Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Don’t be ridiculous,” Albert said as he carried a hollow, plastic donkey through the snow to the nativity display in front of the strip mall. “There were no rabbits in the manger with the baby Jesus.”<br /><br />Beside him, Ed’s right arm was wrapped around Joseph’s neck while he cradled the baby in the crook of his left elbow.<br /><br />“Then how did a rabbit get involved in his resurrection?” Ed said.<br /><br />Albert’s feet stopped sloshing through the melting snow in the parking lot and he turned to Ed, right arm wrapped over the donkey’s back, left hooked under its belly. “What the hell are you talking about?”<br /><br />Ed stopped walking a few steps beyond where Albert stood and turned to him. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a dummy. <i>You’re</i> the dummy. The Easter Bunny, whatta you <i>think</i> I’m talkin’ about?”<br /><br />Ed was five years older than Albert, but they’d gone to school together since the sixth grade because Ed had been held back a few times. Now they were in their forties and both worked for the man who owned the strip mall, Harvey Keith. He was the best boss either of them had ever had, although they worked for him in different capacities.<br /><br />Albert’s shoulders drooped as he tilted his head back and rolled his eyes, then he started walking again. “The Easter Bunny isn’t in the bible, you mook.”<br /><br />“I never <i>said</i> it was in the bible! I’m askin’, if there’s no rabbit involved in Jesus’s birth, then how come there’s one involved in him comin’ back from the dead? I just figured, hey, maybe there was some bunnies in the manger, or somethin’, y’know, with the other animals. And then later, maybe when he came out of his tomb, there was some bunnies hoppin’ around then, too. <i>That</i> would make sense.”<br /><br />Albert walked around the manger facing the street, stepped inside, and placed the donkey next to Mary so it seemed to be peering into the makeshift crib. To Ed, he said, “Can you tell me <i>how</i> that would make sense? Or <i>why</i> it would make sense?”<br /><br />Ed plopped Joseph down on the other side of the crib from Mary, then leaned forward and gently placed the baby Jesus in its bed. “I don’t know if it makes <i>sense</i> so much, but at least it’d be a <i>bunny</i> somewheres near Jesus in the manger and somewheres near Jesus on Easter. And now, maybe, when we celebrate Easter, a bunny comes around and hands out candy to the kids. You know, maybe so they won’t scream in church.”<br /><br />Albert’s sigh became a frothy cloud of vapor in the cold. “Then why isn’t there a <i>Christmas</i> Bunny?”<br /><br />Ed frowned at him and narrowed one eye, suspicious of mockery. “I dunno! ‘Cause we got Santa Claus, I guess. Santa helps Jesus out at Christmas time and the bunny helps him at Easter.”<br /><br />Albert laughed quietly and shook his head. “I don’t know if you’re being funny or if you were deprived of oxygen in the womb.”<br /><br />A silver Hyundai Sonata Hybrid slowed to a stop at the curb in front of the nativity scene. The passenger’s window slid down to reveal a man in his late twenties or early thirties wearing tinted glasses. A young woman of the same age sat behind the wheel. The man said something, but they couldn’t hear him, so Albert and Ed crossed the sidewalk — Albert in his dark suit and overcoat, Ed in his jeans and down jacket — and leaned toward the window.<br /><br />“Is this private property?” the man said, nodding toward the large holiday decorations.<br /><br />“Are you kidding me?” Albert said, sounding at once weary and deeply annoyed. “It’s a strip mall, not a courthouse.” He pointed behind him at one of the storefronts. “You see that? You can’t get your nails done at City Hall.” He aimed his finger at Stumpy’s Liquors, with its bright red-and-green greeting painted on the window: HAPPY HOLIDAYS! “And the government doesn’t run liquor stores, okay? This is all privately owned property, none of it is taxpayer supported. <i>Okay</i>?”<br /><br />The man in the car waved a hand at the manger. “So this is legal?”<br /><br />“<i>Legal</i>? What the hell is <i>wrong</i> with you?” His voice grew gradually louder as he spoke. “Who are you, Santa’s gestapo? Of <i>course</i> it’s legal, it’s mid-November and this is <i>America</i>, you rocket scientist, it’s been the Christmas season since the first Halloween decorations went up at the beginning of <i>September</i>!”<br /><br />“Hey, look, I was just wondering — ”<br /><br />“Yeah, yeah, I <i>know</i> what you were wondering! Now why don’t you go donate some toys to an orphanage, or something, to make up for being an obnoxious <i>douchebag</i>?”<br /><br />As the window slid back up, the car drove away, kicking up a few clumps of dirty slush.<br /><br />“Jesus Christ,” Albert muttered as they headed back toward the mall. “When did they change that damned song?”<br /><br />“What song, Albert?”<br /><br />“That fa-la-la song. When did they change it to ‘’Tis the season to be an asshole, fa-la-la-la-la-fucking-la?’”<br /><br />Ed chuckled. “I don’t think they’ve changed it yet, but I know what you mean. I didn’t think you believed in any of that stuff, though, Albert,” he added, hooking a gloved thumb over his shoulder at the nativity.<br /><br />“No, I don’t. All that Jesus stuff ... I mean, if there <i>was</i> a Jesus and even half of that stuff in the bible happened, I don’t believe he walked on water or did all those other magic tricks. But, hey, he shook things up, spoke out for the poor and the sick, and he pissed off the people in charge, so that makes him okay in my book. But it’s <i>Christmas</i>! Does everybody have to agree on <i>everything</i>, now, before we can digest our fudge and fruitcake? Yeah, I know, they can’t represent one religion on government ground unless they do it with all others, I get that. That’s fine, I’m all for it, and it’s the law. But why does it all have to be so <i>ugly</i>? And come <i>on</i>, it’s a <i>strip mall</i>! What the hell did that idiot think, that Palace Massage and Aromatherapy is a government operation? <i>Jesus</i>!”<br /><br />They stopped to wait while a pickup truck slowly backed out of its parking space.<br /><br />“Remember when we were kids, Ed? The whole idea at Christmas time was to at least make a little effort to be a better person, right? Whatever you thought that was supposed to be. Maybe you smiled and said hello to the postal carrier you never acknowledged the rest of the year, or you tried to be friendlier to your cranky neighbor, or you gave more to charity, or maybe it was the <i>only</i> time you gave to charity. Or you went to church and maybe put a little extra money in the offering plate. Things like that.”<br /><br />“‘Member that time we decorated old lady Taggart’s front yard?” Ed said with a laugh.<br /><br />A smile grew slowly on Albert’s face. “Oh, yeah,” he said, nodding. “I remember that.”<br /><br />“We put Santa and his reindeer on the lawn and lights on her porch.”<br /><br />“That’s right, she wouldn’t let us put them on the roof.”<br /><br />“Yeah, ‘member? She caught us climbin’ up on the roof and came after us with a broom. Kept yellin’ ‘Your parents are gonna <i>sue</i> me!’”<br /><br />Albert let out a full, throaty laugh. “Yeah, see, <i>that’s</i> the kind of thing I’m talking about. We knew she didn’t like us, we knew she didn’t want us around, but it was <i>Christmas</i>!” He smiled again. “She sure was a mean old woman.”<br /><br />“‘Specially at Christmas time. She hated Christmas. She was a widow twice as long as she was married. Last few years of her life, I’d go over and do some yard work for her.” He shrugged one shoulder. “You know, anything she needed doin’. She was always mean about it, thought I was tryin’ to cheat her out of somethin’, always tried to chase me off. Christmas come around, and she’d get even meaner.”<br /><br />“Whatever happened to her? I don’t remember hearing.”<br /><br />“Blew her brains out with her husband’s shotgun. Used her toe. Did it on Christmas Eve about twelve years ago.”<br /><br />The pickup truck pulled out of the parking lot and turned right on Convention Street. It was starting to rain and the pickup’s windshield wipers came on as it merged into traffic. Albert and Ed continued their walk toward the mall, slower now.<br /><br />Albert shook his head back and forth slowly. “What’s happened to people, Ed? I know things are bad, everybody’s broke, jobs are scarce. But things have been bad before. And Christmas time brings a lot of pressures, I know that. But wasn’t there a time when people <i>tried</i> to be nicer at Christmas?”<br /><br />Ed squinted as he thought about the question. “Maybe it just seemed that way when we was kids.”<br /><br />“Maybe. But people weren’t so ... angry. Why the hell is everybody so <i>angry</i>?”<br /><br />“I dunno, Albert. Maybe everybody’s so angry ‘cause ... well, ‘cause everybody <i>else</i> is so angry. But I’m pretty dumb, even for a janitor, so I dunno.”<br /><br />Albert frowned and gave Ed a sidelong look with hooded eyes. “You’re not dumb, Ed. I keep telling you that. Didn’t they have you tested for a bunch of stuff back in school? You know, learning disabilities, stuff like that?”<br /><br />“Oh, yeah, yeah. But I failed all the tests.” He barked an abrupt laugh.<br /><br />“But they were negative, right? There was nothing wrong with you. And what did everyone conclude was the problem?”<br /><br />Grinning, Ed said, “I’m a lazy ass. And I am. Long as I got some beans and Mountain Dew, a place to sleep, and a bowling alley nearby, I’m happy. I don’t need nothin’ more’n that.”<br /><br />“That’s right. But you’re not <i>dumb</i>. Don’t talk about yourself that way.”<br /><br />Ed looked at him briefly with a surprised smirk.<br /><br />They stepped onto the canopied sidewalk that stretched along the front of the shops. “Would you like a drink, Ed? Some jerky, or something? I think I’d like a cup of coffee. Let’s go into Stumpy’s. My treat.”<br /><br />They turned right on the sidewalk and walked by one of the strip’s empty units, previously Captain Collectible.<br /><br />“What are your plans for Christmas, Ed?” Albert said.<br /><br />“Hell, I don’t even know if I’m doin’ anything for <i>Thanksgiving</i> yet. Last Christmas, me’n some friends had a nice turkey dinner down to the bowling alley, and then we bowled our asses off. Probably do the same thing again this Christmas. How ‘bout you, Albert?”<br /><br />“Oh, I’m doing the usual family thing.”<br /><br />“That’s good. It’s nice to have family at Christmas time.”<br /><br />“Oh, yeah. It’s all planned. Last year, we drove upstate to see my wife’s family. This year, we’ll have Christmas with my family here in town. It’ll be a typical family gathering, I’m sure. Dad will get drunk. Mom will get hysterical. My sister will get slapped by her husband, and the Children of the Corn will be screaming about how Santa screwed them. Yeah, I can almost feel the warmth now.”<br /><br />As they walked by Mia’s Nails, Albert’s phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Mr. Keith. Albert stopped to answer the phone. While he talked to the boss, Ed stared idly at the traffic on Convention. Neither one of them saw the young man in the denim jacket who, farther up the sidewalk, reached out to push the door of Stumpy’s open but stopped for a moment to look at the front window before going inside.<br /><br />“I’m here with Ed,” Albert said. “I helped him put up the nativity out front. My meeting with Miss Lee at Palace Massage is in — ” He checked his watch. “ — twenty minutes. Shouldn’t take long. She’s a reasonable woman and she knew the rent increase was coming. I’ll be back in the office after lunch, if that’s okay with you.”<br /><br />After the conversation ended, they continued up the sidewalk.<br /><br />“You gettin’ a massage?” Ed asked.<br /><br />“Here? God, no. I have to meet with Miss Lee over a rent dispute.”<br /><br />“What’s that title Mr. Keith gave you again?”<br /><br />“Vice President of Field Operations.”<br /><br />Ed grinned. “Sounds important.”<br /><br />“Half the time, it’s not much more than a glorified errand boy, but it’s a good job.”<br /><br />They stepped out of the cold and into the warm stuffiness of Stumpy’s Liquors. It was a cluttered store all year long, but during the holidays, it became even more cluttered with decorations and Christmas displays. To their right stood a Santa Claus that looked bigger than it was because it stood on a three-foot-tall base wrapped in corrugated paper with a red-brick design. He wore red velour coat and pants with the traditional fluffy, white cuffs and collar, with the traditional shiny black boots, and his shiny, white beard appeared to be made of spun glass. He had a green bag slung over his right shoulder and held in his extended left hand a bottle of vodka. Small toys were scattered all around his feet. Just behind Santa’s bag stood a green Christmas tree covered with sparkling ornaments and lights.<br /><br />To their immediate left was the register, behind which stood Stumpy himself, a stout, craggy Vietnam veteran in his early sixties with a prosthetic right leg from the knee down. He had a droopy white goatee and long white hair that he pulled back in a ponytail. He stood with his beefy, tattooed arms folded together across his chest, talking quietly with a tall, slender man in a denim jacket who had his hands cocked on his hips, elbows pointing outward.<br /><br />“What’s your poison, Ed?” Albert said as he headed for the coffee station. “You’re still guzzling that Mountain Dew stuff, aren’t you?”<br /><br />There were four carafes lined up, each labeled to identify the kind of coffee it held. Albert pulled a medium-size Styrofoam cup from the holder, held it under the nozzle of the carafe marked “REGULAR,” and pumped the top to fill the cup.<br /><br />Ed chuckled as he passed Albert and opened one of the soft drink coolers. “I ain’t ever drank nothin’ besides Mountain Dew since high school, I think.”<br /><br />“If you’re not careful, you’ll spend the last years of your life drinking nothing but Mylanta and crapping into a bag. Those sodas will eat up your guts after a while.”<br /><br />“Yeah, that’s what Mom used to tell me. Course, she was a drunk who died early of liver failure, so I guess nobody’s perfect.”<br /><br />“Look!” Stumpy barked.<br /><br />Startled by the shouted word, Albert and Ed turned toward the register in front. Stumpy was leaning forward, both hands flat on the countertop beside the register as he glared at his young customer.<br /><br />“I got Jews who come in here, Muslims, Shintos,” Stumpy said. “There’s a family of Sikhs lives up the road and they buy their milk and eggs here like clockwork. None of ‘em celebrate Christmas. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this city’s got diversity up the hoo-ha and my business depends on customers <i>buying</i> things. So I put ‘happy holidays’ in the window this year to include <i>everybody</i>, okay? And I’ll be doin’ it every year from now on, until people like you make me so fuckin’ crazy that my head explodes and they gotta close this place down.”<br /><br />The guy in the denim jacket straightened his back. He had shaggy blond hair and wore black jeans, black-and-red winter boots. He dropped his arms at his sides and his bare hands looked pink and gnawed by the cold. In his left, he held a wool cap that he crumpled in a fist as Stumpy finished his little impromptu speech. “But you’re a <i>Christian</i>, Stumpy!” He raised his right fist and brought it down hard on the countertop on the word “Christian.”<br /><br />“I said I was <i>raised</i> a Christian, but I haven’t been to church since Christ was a corporal and I got no interest in goin’. That’s got <i>nothin’</i> to do with this!”<br /><br />“But you know what they’re doing. You know what they’re trying to do to the holiday, it’s just another way of squeezing Christianity out of America. We’ve <i>talked</i> about this!”<br /><br />“No. <i>You’ve</i> talked about it, and I’ve stood right here being a congenial host in the hope that you’ll buy another Coke or Baby Ruth or, if I’m <i>lucky</i>, another round of both.”<br /><br />“Oh, come <i>on</i>, Stumpy, I’ve been coming in here for three <i>years</i>! I thought we were <i>friends</i>.”<br /><br />Albert finally mustered the strength to walk back to the front, smiling and saying loudly enough to be heard, “Hey, Stumpy, you know, none of us want you to go exploding your head all over the place, or anything.”<br /><br />Stumpy smiled and gave Albert a nod of recognition. “It’s okay, Mr. Antonellis. This guy’s a regular customer who’s complaining about my decorations. He’s gonna change the subject or leave, right Chris?”<br /><br />Chris’s head turned slowly from side to side. “I can’t believe this. What are we supposed to <i>do</i>?”<br /><br />“About <i>what</i>?” Stumpy bellowed, spreading his arms.<br /><br />“Come on, guys, it’s Christmas,” Albert said.<br /><br />Standing just behind him, Ed popped open his can of Mountain Dew.<br /><br />Stumpy’s body jerked once as he released a single laugh. “No, it’s not, Mr. Antonellis. We haven’t even gotten through Thanksgiving yet. I used to love Christmas, but it’s like a tumor. It just keeps getting bigger and pretty soon, it’ll metastasize and spread through the whole year. The radio’ll be playing ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Silver Bells’ in May. They’ll probably make Santa Claus president. Tell you the truth, if I didn’t have the store, I’d punch anybody wished me merry Christmas before December first. But people buy more,” he said with an exasperated shrug. “Put up a Santa Claus, some snowmen, they spend more money. Pavlov’s elves. Even this year, with everything so bad, everybody so broke — that doesn’t stop ‘em! It’s insane.”<br /><br />“But it’s <i>not </i>Christmas,” Chris said. His voice was low but had suppressed anger behind it. “They’re taking Christ out of it.” He pointed a finger at the store’s front window. “<i>You’re</i> taking Christ out of it!”<br /><br />Stumpy rolled his eyes. “Oh, Jesus, here we go again.”<br /><br />“Hey, nobody’s taking Christ out of anything!” Albert said. “We just put up a nativity scene out front. Jesus is right out there where everybody can see him!”<br /><br />Chris jerked his head back and forth insistently. “Not at the capitol building. Not at City Hall.”<br /><br />Albert said, “No, that’s not true. There are Christmas displays there, but they include other religions, too. This is still America, despite the best efforts of many, and religion is still a big part of it. But Christianity isn’t the <i>only</i> religion!”<br /><br />“It’s the <i>American</i> religion, the religion of our founders."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stumpy tipped his head back and laughed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"This country was <i>built on</i> biblical Judeo-Christian principals and — ”<br /><br />“Don’t include the Jews!” Stumpy said with a cold laugh. “They don’t celebrate Christmas and they got no problem with ‘happy holidays,’ so don’t drag them into this.”<br /><br />“Christians are the only group it’s still acceptable to ridicule. Gay marriage is making Christianity a <i>crime</i>! Don’t you guys watch the news?”<br /><br />“Just because it’s got the word ‘news’ in its name,” Stumpy said, “doesn’t mean it’s not feeding you a bowl of shit. You ever think of that? Haven’t you noticed that some will deliver news while others, I don’t know, looks like all they want to do is piss people off? You ever notice that? Wonder about it?”<br /><br />Chris’s nostrils flared and when he spoke again, his voice trembled. “Atheists are going around this country tearing down Christianity.”<br /><br />“No, they’re not,” Albert said. “They’re going around the country being annoying assholes, but what they’re doing is perfectly legal. This is a free society and there are assholes everywhere, so you’ve just got to learn to deal with them, or ignore them, or something. You don’t go to jail for being an asshole in this country, and if you did, everybody who gets pissed off about ‘happy holidays’ would be in jail with them.”<br /><br />A sneering look moved across Chris’s face as he glared at Albert. He nodded slightly, then said, “I suppose you’re a Jew.”<br /><br />At the same moment, Albert and Stumpy let loose a loud “Ooohhhh!”<br /><br />“I’m Italian, you dick. I was raised Catholic. Like that makes any fucking difference.” He nodded toward Ed. “<i>He’s</i> Jewish.”<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“On my mother’s side,” Ed said. “Personally, I lean more toward Buddhism.”<br /><br />“Yeah, sure, that’s okay,” Chris said, his voice sounding more breathy and tremulous. “All that’s okay. But if you’re a Christian, you’re a target, you’re an outcast. Pretty soon, they’re gonna start rounding us up and putting us in camps. They’re already built, waiting for us. Gay marriage will be legal in all fifty states soon and Christians will be <i>criminals</i>.”<br /><br />“Jesus Christ, you know what you are?” Albert said. “You think you’re some kinda patriot, some kinda warrior for Jesus, but all you are is angry and stupid, and all those two things do is feed each other.” Albert clapped his hands together. “Okay, you’ve worn out your welcome here. Anything you want? Some gum or a pack of cigarettes? Get it and get the hell out, and if you come back, keep your goddamned opinions to yourself or you’re banned for life, you understand me?”<br /><br />“You can’t do that. Who the hell are <i>you</i> to do that?”<br /><br />“Vice President of Field Operations for Harvey Keith Properties, that sound important enough for you?” Albert stepped toward Chris, put a hand on his shoulder and gently turned him toward the door.<br /><br />Chris pushed against Albert’s hand with his shoulder as he reached his right hand around his own back and slipped it under the denim jacket.<br /><br />“Oh, shit,” Stumpy said, moving fast but not fast enough.<br /><br />Chris’s pink-fingered right hand held a gun when it reappeared from behind him, and he raised that gun in Albert’s direction. Stumpy bent down, reached beneath the counter and produced a sawed-off shotgun.<br /><br />Chris fired his gun before he’d finished aiming it and the bullet entered the left side of Albert’s abdomen, just below his rib cage.<br /><br />“Albert!” Ed screamed, his voice a shrill knife that sliced through the cluttered store.<br /><br />Stumpy was racking the shotgun when Chris fired a second time, sending a bullet into the right side of Albert’s chest.<br /><br />Since the first gunshot, all Albert could hear was a loud, unwavering ringing sound. The first bullet hit him like a cannonball, making him bend at the waist with clenched eyes as he was punched backward, unable to breathe. The second bullet kicked him in the chest and he straightened somewhat as he fell backward, arms flailing. His back slammed into something and he began to slide into a sitting position against it, but his flailing arms hooked onto something and prevented him from hitting the floor. He felt the rough surface of the corrugated paper under his hands.<br /><br />There was another explosion when Stumpy fired his shotgun, but Albert did not hear it through the ringing. He felt bits of Chris splatter onto him, though, warm and wet on his face and neck.<br /><br />Chris hit the floor hard, a bloody mess.<br /><br />Ed screamed Albert’s name again and again.<br /><br />Albert opened his eyes as he tilted his head back. Something had opened up deep inside him and all that came out was wrenching pain that rapidly spread through his whole body. Overhead, he saw a face slowly falling toward him, its white beard tumbling over itself like foam, its left arm outstretched and held up, clutching the phony vodka bottle in its black-gloved hand. Falling behind it was the green pyramid of dangling, twinkling ornaments and lights. They engulfed his field of vision as he died, and Albert’s last thought was, <i>Peace on earth, ho ho ho ...</i></span><br />
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© <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Copyright 2013 by Ray Garton
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<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-42105254470710418672013-08-23T15:57:00.000-07:002016-12-09T14:49:53.261-08:00DARKLINGS: The Story Behind the Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My first novel, <a href="http://preposteroustwaddlecock.blogspot.com/2013/08/seductions-story-behind-book.html" target="_blank"><i>Seductions</i></a>, was part of a two-book deal with Pinnacle, so as soon as I was done with that book, I went to work on the next. There had been a good deal of sex in <i>Seductions</i> and the book had a high school setting. I wanted this novel to be as different from the first as possible, so sex would not be a priority and it would not be school-related. But I had no idea what it would be about. My thoughts turned to a recurring nightmare that had haunted my sleep for years. I had been wanting to use it in a story or book for quite a while, and I thought this might be the time.<br /><br />In the nightmare, I was being wheeled very fast down a hospital corridor on a gurney as pain exploded in the right side of my abdomen, just below my rib cage. I was rushed into the operating room where doctors and nurses in surgical masks and gowns were waiting. The sense of urgency was great and I wasn’t even transferred to an operating table, they just started working on me there on the gurney (dream logic). Doctors began the surgery without bothering to anesthetize me. I felt the scalpel slice through the skin of my abdomen, but it didn’t hurt. The pain inside me, though, raged on. Masked faces with intense eyes hovered over me as the doctors continued to work.<br /><br />Then they froze and I saw all the eyes above the surgical masks widen in horror as they stared down at my open abdomen. They didn’t move for a long time, and then some of them slowly backed away from me. The doctor in charge looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for you.” When I asked what was wrong, instead of explaining it to me, he showed it to me — for just a moment, I was able to see through his eyes as he looked into my abdomen. <br /><br />Clinging to the underside of my rib cage on the right side was a glistening black mass about the size of a man’s hand. It was either pulsing rhythmically or breathing, I couldn’t tell which.<br /><br />An instant later, I was looking at the doctor again. When I asked him what it was, he said, “We’re not sure, but ... it’s evil. If we take it out of you, it will kill us all.” Then he silently went about the business of sewing me back up as the intense pain continued. That’s where the dream always ended.<br /><br />I wasn’t sure how, but I wanted to use that dream, or at least elements of it, and one of those elements was the hospital setting. I knew from personal experience that few places can go from quiet boredom to frantic chaos faster than a hospital emergency room.<br /><br />As a boy, I had some mysterious health problems that required me to spend a lot of time in the hospital while doctors tried to figure those problems out and fix me. I would stay for weeks, sometimes months, at a time at the Clinical Research Study Center, which was located in Ward 18 at San Francisco General Hospital. It’s tough for a little kid to be locked up in a hospital for such long periods of time and the doctors and staff at Ward 18 knew that, so I was allowed to wander around the hospital and sometimes even leave the hospital when I wasn’t undergoing some test or procedure. On Friday and Saturday nights, the place to be if you wanted some quality entertainment was the San Francisco General Hospital emergency room. With a paperback novel and a notebook and pen, I would wander down to the ER early so I could find a seat, and I’d sit in the waiting room and wait for things to get interesting. They always did.<br /><br />By nine o’clock, the ER was a crowded madhouse, usually with a bloodied floor. Stabbings, shootings, car wrecks, overdoses, heart attacks, attempted suicides, battered wives and girlfriends and hookers, injured children, people with every imaginable wound and sickness, and always, without fail, at least one nasty fight broke out in that waiting room before midnight, usually more. And that was just the <i>waiting room</i>! I could only imagine what was going on in the back, beyond the pale green door where occasionally I could hear muffled shouting or screaming or miserable wailing. I always had a book with me, but I never read it because I was too busy writing. I wrote down descriptions of the people I saw, snatches of conversation, and tried to capture images, odors, behavior, people and atmosphere on the page. It was probably one of the best writing exercises I’ve ever engaged in because I didn’t have time to think, I had to write fast to keep up with everything, so fast I was practically scribbling, trying to keep up with my thoughts and with all the frenzied — and often frightening — activity around me. I didn’t think of it as a writing exercise at the time, of course. I was just looking for something to do.<br /><br />I’ve never given it much thought before, but looking back on it now, I suspect I learned more about writing from just a few of those emergency room visits than in a whole semester of creative writing classes. It’s something you might want to try. If you live in or near a big city — someplace where the hospital's ER is going to be a-hoppin’ on Friday and Saturday nights — take a notebook, sit in the waiting room, and do what I did. Stay as long as you can and collect as many observations as possible. Then come back here (or contact me on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ray.garton.3" target="_blank">Facebook</a>) and let me know if it was a useful exercise for you.<br /><br />Having decided that my new book would open with an intense scene in a hospital emergency room, and keeping in mind my recurring nightmare, I sat down at my electric Brother typewriter and dove in headfirst.<br /><br />No matter how much preparatory work I do on a book, no matter how much outlining (something I don’t waste my time on anymore unless a publisher absolutely <i>must</i> see an outline) or character sketching I do, I have no idea what the hell I’m working on until I’ve been writing it for a while. That’s when I discover the story and characters, when I actually have my hands on the keyboard and I’m working on the manuscript. I’ve tried everything else, all the preparation and outlining, and it just doesn’t work for me. I can write a full outline and have a stack of notes and character sketches on my desk, and no matter how hard I try to stick to all that stuff, the book, when it’s done, will bear little or no resemblance to anything on those pages.<br /><br />This book, I discovered, was about a physical manifestation of evil that takes the form of small, glistening, black creatures that can flatten out like crepes or roll up into worms that will do horrible things to anyone they enter. The original title was <i>Evilspawn</i>, but the folks at Pinnacle didn’t do any backflips over that. My editor, Michael Bradley, suggested <i>Darklings</i>, which I liked much better than my idea, and that became the novel’s title.<br /><br />Whenever someone tells me he’s about to read <i>Darklings</i>, I always say, “Be sure to hold your nose.” It always gets a laugh because people think I’m being self-deprecating by cutting my own book down a little. But that’s not what I mean when I say that. To find out what I <i>do</i> mean, you’ll have to read the book.<br /><br />Now, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">more than</span> thirty years later, <i>Darklings</i> is back, available for the first time for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Darklings-Ray-Garton/dp/1497642612/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481323592&sr=1-1&keywords=darklings+ray+garton" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Kindle from Amazon</b></span></a>,<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> for <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/darklings-ray-garton/1006165974?ean=9781497642614" target="_blank"><b>Nook from Barnes and Noble</b></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Darklings-Ray-Garton/dp/1497642612/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481323592&sr=1-1&keywords=darklings+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b>in paperback</b></a>.</span></span> To see all my other books <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and keep up with new releases, visit my website at <b><a href="http://raygartononline.com/">RayGartonOnline.<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">com</span></a></b></span>.</span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-17631032735413995022013-08-07T13:17:00.001-07:002014-07-17T10:16:53.558-07:00SEDUCTIONS: The Story Behind the Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Seductions</i> was my first novel. I couldn’t close my mouth the first time I saw the book and held it in my hands. A half-naked woman dangled from the dripping, embossed letters of the title, which were written in glimmering blood-red foil. It was lurid. It was garish. And I was thrilled. That meant it would fit right in with all the other lurid, garish, blood-dripping paperback covers on the shelves in every book store, grocery store, convenience store, pharmacy, truck stop and airport in the country. I was in! The novel’s publication owed a great deal to luck. I was in the right place at the right time.<br /><br />It was published in 1984, a wonderful time to be a horror fan. I think the roots of the horror genre’s enormous popularity at that time were in the success of Ira Levin’s terrifying 1967 novel <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i>, which became a huge bestseller, putting the modern horror novel on the publishing map. It came along in a period when the country was beginning to go through startling changes, when the United States was involved in a controversial war that was eating up our young before our eyes on the evening news, when old traditions and ideas were being left behind by some and actively torn down by others. The previous year, <i>Time</i> magazine had run a cover that asked the question “Is God Dead?” and Anton LaVey had established the Church of Satan in San Francisco. Levin’s novel struck a cord with readers and sold over four million copies. The following year saw the release of Roman Polanski’s movie adaptation, which was a huge success, and which remains, in my opinion, one of the greatest horror movies ever made.<br /><br />As the 1970s got underway, Satan was big in America. Levin’s book and Polanski’s movie had launched a Satanic trend that seemed to take over the genre in fiction and film. Novels like Fred Mustard Stewart’s <i>The Mephisto Waltz</i> and William Peter Blatty’s <i>The Exorcist</i> were turned into successful movies. <i>The Exorcist</i>, in particular, was a blockbuster hit that had lines going around the block wherever it played and injected the trend with steroids. Whether it was black-robed Satan worshipers in movies like <i>The Brotherhood of Satan</i>, <i>Race with the Devil</i>, or <i>The Devil’s Rain</i>, or the devil and his minions in <i>The Omen</i>, <i>To the Devil, a Daughter</i>, <i>The Sentinal</i>, <i>The Legacy</i>, and so many others, Satan was a big enough box office draw to compete with Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood. There were made-for-TV movies like <i>Satan’s Triangle</i> and <i>Satan’s School for Girls</i>. He possessed a baby on the network sitcom <i>Soap</i>. I even remember an episode of <i>Mannix</i> in which the detective was up against a Satanic cult. Satan was everywhere.<br /><br />If Satan wasn’t your speed, there was the new guy who was blowing everybody away with one scary-as-hell novel after another, Stephen King. His first novel, <i>Carrie</i> was a runaway hit, and Brian De Palma’s movie was iconic. King brought the horror genre into the modern world, even into the mainstream. He filled it with McDonalds and Burger Kings and familiar brands and products, and populated it with real people we recognized, people we cared for and wanted to follow. That world was also occupied by real horrors like cancer and crib death and mental illness, so that the horror, no matter how wild and supernatural, always took place in the real world where we all lived. He entertained us with excruciatingly terrifying stories while showing us ourselves and the world in which we lived. And with those novels came a wave of Stephen King movie adaptations. Each new King bestseller and movie adaptation fed the wave of popularity the genre was riding.<br /><br />By the late 1970s, the horror boom was booming. Genre novels were everywhere from writers like the astonishingly prolific Graham Masterton, who’s 1975 novel <i>The Manitou</i> was a bestseller and became a popular movie starring Tony Curtis, to former movie actor Thomas Tryon, whose elegantly written novels <i>The Other</i> and <i>Harvest Home </i>were bestsellers and adapted into a popular movie and TV miniseries respectively. At least one horror movie, and often more, was opening every weekend, whether it was a glossy studio offering at the local movie house or a tacky exploitation movie at the drive-in. Horror was everywhere.<br /><br />It was into this stream that I dove when <i>Seductions</i> was published in 1984. Publishers were buying up horror novels as fast as they could be written, and every book store had a sizeable horror section. I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. I agree with Woody Allen, who said, “People are afraid to acknowledge or to face what huge dependency they have on luck.”<br /><br />An advance reading copy had been sent to Robert Bloch, among other writers. Bloch replied to my editor with a letter explaining that he could not endorse <i>Seductions</i> because he was too disturbed by the close relationship between sex and violence in the book. I was flabbergasted that I had “disturbed” the man who wrote <i>Psycho</i>. In the late summer of 1984, a few months before <i>Seductions</i> was published, I met Bloch at a convention. I introduced myself and mentioned his response to my book. “Ah, yes,” he said, clamping his cigarette holder between his teeth. “You’re unwell.”<br /><br />I had found a literary agent by accident. That, by the way, is the only reliable way to find one, because there’s never one around who’s interested when you’re actually looking. He was a friend of an ex-girlfriend’s father, and once we connected, I sent him some short stories. He said they were good, but he didn’t sell short stories. Did I have a novel? Of course, I said! I was halfway through one and would send it to him as soon as it was finished. That was ... less than factual. I was not working on a novel. But I decided to get to work on one fast.<br /><br />I knew I wanted it to be erotic, but that was all I knew. I thought sex and horror were a perfect match, because when are we more vulnerable, more naked, than when we’re engaged in sex? I was barely twenty when I wrote <i>Seductions</i>, and keep in mind that I was a very sheltered and inexperienced twenty-year-old. That may explain the book’s high school setting. In fact, it may explain a <i>lot</i>. I’d recently read an interview with Stephen King (I think it was in <i>Playboy</i>) in which he’d mentioned that he liked the idea of vagina dentata but had been unable to come up with a way to use it in a book. I latched onto that, never giving a thought to how much it would endear me to feminists everywhere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I was living with my parents for most of the time that I was writing <i>Seductions</i>. One morning, I got up and went to the kitchen for some breakfast, where Mom was waiting for me. My unfinished manuscript was on the kitchen table. Mom had been unable to sleep the night before, so she read what I was writing, and now she wanted to talk about it. Oh, goodie. It’s important to note that my mother, a very religious woman, was, if possible, even more sheltered and naive than I at that point. To this day, she thinks an orgasm is a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole. Our conversation went something like this:<br /><br />“I read your book last night.”<br />“What did you think?”<br />“Well, you know I don’t care for that kind of story. It’s well written, but ... I know things have changed and it’s no big deal to write about things like sex, but ... well, they don’t really <i>swallow</i> it, do they?”<br />“Some do.”<br />“Oh. And ... how do you know?”<br />“I read a lot.”<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My first novel did not set the world on fire. America was not seized by vagina dentata fever. Best of all, there was no merchandising, which would have led to nothing good. But the book put me on the map. After that, I simply refused to go away.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Seductions</i> is now available for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seductions-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CJTC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405617090&sr=1-1&keywords=seductions+ray+garton" target="_blank">Kindle at Amazon</a>, and for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seductions-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CJTC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405617090&sr=1-1&keywords=seductions+ray+garton" target="_blank">Nook at Barnes and Noble</a>. For information about all my work and updates on new releases, please visit my website at <a href="http://raygartononline.com/">RayGartonOnline.com</a>.</span><br />
<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-74903068799027419712013-07-20T22:42:00.000-07:002014-09-28T14:21:42.651-07:00BESTIAL: The Story Behind the Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I finished <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ravenous-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CL4U/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411938244&sr=1-1&keywords=ravenous+ray+garton" target="_blank"><i><b>Ravenous</b></i></a>, the story had not ended. That’s clear to anyone who read the book, which has a rather bleak ending that leaves a whole lot of things unresolved. <i>Bestial </i>picks up shortly after<i><b> Ravenous</b></i> ends, as the werewolves begin to organize an effort to take over the town of Big Rock.<br /><br />In <i>Ravenous</i>, I introduced sex into the werewolf mythos. That had always been the domain of the vampire, ever since Bram Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i>. Vampires are sexy. Werewolves ... not so much. Rather than an erotic kind of sex, the focus was on the sex drive and how someone normally able to control him- or herself might react to it while in a lycanthropic state. The most important thing about <i>Bestial</i>, or any sequel I write, the thing that I kept repeating to myself like a mantra as I began work on the book, was this: <b>IT CANNOT BE MORE OF THE SAME!</b><br /><br />I’ve written far more sequels than I ever thought I’d write (for many years, I claimed I would never write one), and I’ve only written four. I generally don’t like sequels because they tend to be nothing but more of the same. In film, I think the best example of a bad sequel would be ... well ... just about all of them. There are a few exceptions, though. James Whale’s 1931 classic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsKoakqPmAQ" target="_blank"><i>Frankenstein</i></a> is grim, subversive, and bleak. His 1935 sequel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Izq-E3o7Y" target="_blank"><i>The Bride of Frankenstein</i></a>, is quite upbeat and playful and even <i>more</i> subversive. It strums a range of emotional strings and can take you from laughter to the edge of tears. It tells more of the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his creation but does it in an entirely different way than the first movie. The same can be said of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDqTwSO1DDc" target="_blank"><i>Aliens</i></a>. While <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCm_srXvB0c" target="_blank"><i>Alien</i></a> is a dark, claustrophobic horror movie set in space, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYkxCzBszOQ" target="_blank"><i>Aliens</i></a> continues the story as a big, loud, testosterone-infused action picture that still manages to scare the hell out of us. I’m of the opinion that, whether it’s a novel or a movie, if a sequel is just more of the same, then either it should not have been done, or it was done for the wrong reasons.<br /><br />For <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bestial-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CNFW/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1BW91DWGX7NK9CEWAZX2" target="_blank"><b><i>Bestial</i></b></a>, I decided to borrow another stock ingredient of the vampire tale and apply it to the werewolf tale: Religion. Ever since <i>Dracula</i>, vampires have been hissingly repulsed by the crucifix, the Christian symbol of redemption. Dracula was a kind of stand-in for Satan — a demonic predator, perverse, unnatural, the embodiment of evil — and the church and its symbols — the crucifix, holy water, hallowed ground — stood for goodness and righteousness, god by proxy. I would have to use religion in a different way.<br /><br />Eons ago, I wrote a novella called <i>Monsters</i>, about a horror novelist who is harassed by members of the fanatical church in which he was raised, a church that does not approve of his work. It was inspired by my own experience with the Seventh-day Adventist church. It has been called a werewolf story, but technically, it’s not. I’m pretty sure the word “werewolf” is never used in the story, and there is no description of a werewolf. But the protagonist has been told for so long — since infancy, really — that he is a monster because of his interests and what he writes that he begins to turn into one. It’s a nonspecific monster, but a monster nonetheless.<br /><br />I liked that concept a lot, and I’d been meaning to return to it in one form or another for some time. It seemed perfectly suited for <b><i>Bestial</i></b>. Bob Berens, a character in the book, has been raised in the Seventh-day Adventist church — write what you know! — and he’s been emotionally crippled by it. He still lives with his mother and is pretty much afraid of life. He’s been told for so long that he’s a filthy, sinning worm in the eyes of god that he has come to believe it.<br /><br />I based Bob Berens on an old friend of mine from my Seventh-day Adventist school days. In middle age, he still lives with his mother. He has never had a relationship, doesn’t date and never has, he is socially crippled and paralyzed by fear of virtually everything. I have great empathy for him because for some time early in my life, I was paralyzed by those same fears. I managed to get out from under it. He did not. I know of many others like him within the church. It is a controlling religion that instills terror in its children early on, and I’ve seen the long-term damage it does first hand. My friend’s situation and state of mind are worse than Bob’s, but I had to water things down for the book or people would have found him hard to believe. I know my friend has a bounty of repressed resentments, anger, and bitterness, to say nothing of all the desires and needs of any human being. But they are repressed by the overwhelming fear that has been created in him, by the belief that he is simply a horrible sinner and will never be anything else.<br /><br />The werewolf is an assault on society, on civilization. “Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night,” — a good, decent man who follows all the rules and always takes the high road and is upright and moral — “may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” When the change takes place, all that goodness and decency and upright moral crap go right out the window. The crucifix and holy water are useless. All the things that have been repressed — selfish desires and buried lusts — take over. It seemed like the perfect place for religion in my story because nothing else represses so effectively and so fearfully.<br /><br />My choice to insert religion into the story has been the focus of some criticism. A number of reviewers accuse me of having some kind of personal vendetta against religion, of “Christian-bashing.” This happens every time a religious character in one of my books or stories is a less than moral person, or when something unsavory is done in the name of a religion (except for the Satanic religions, nobody seems to mind dissing those). If that were true, there would be no <i>good</i> Christians in my work and religion would <i>never</i> be portrayed in a positive light — and that simply isn’t the case. My novels <a href="http://www.amazon.com/New-Neighbor-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CKP0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411938878&sr=1-1&keywords=the+new+neighbor+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>The New Neighbor</i></b></a>,<i><b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Channel-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CMKS/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411938936&sr=1-1&keywords=dark+channel+ray+garton" target="_blank">Dark Channel</a></b></i>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shackled-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CKEQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411939001&sr=1-1&keywords=shackled+ray+garton" target="_blank"><b><i>Shackled</i></b></a> are perfect examples of this.<br /><br />In <i>Shackled</i>, for instance, there’s the Walker family. Ethan Walker is a pastor, a good guy, a family man, and a devoted Christian. His son Samuel is kidnapped, and other horrible things happen to the family, but as devastating as all of it is, Pastor Walker’s faith gets him through it, gives him hope. He refuses to blame god or let go of his religious beliefs. He kind of stands out among the cynical characters who surround him — in a thoroughly positive way. Those who accuse me of hating Christians or having some kind of search-and-destroy vendetta against religion based on my fiction either aren’t aware of my other work or are deliberately not taking it into consideration.<br /><br />If I write a character who is a Christian and who does bad things, it doesn’t mean I’m bashing Christians any more than writing a female character who does bad things means I’m bashing women. I chose to use religion in <b><i>Bestial</i></b> not so I would have a chance to portray it in a bad way, but because, in this case, it was a useful ingredient in my storytelling mix. I chose an exceptionally repressive and fear-based cult — one with which I have close, personal experience and about which I wrote nothing inaccurate or untrue in the book — because the eventual result of all that repression and fear is always some kind of deviance or weirdness ... like turning into a fanged, hairy monster with no inhibitions, a monster driven only by its previously denied lusts and appetites.<br /><br />Although it’s still quite dark, <i>Bestial</i> has a lighter tone than <i>Ravenous</i> because I think it’s a mistake to take something like werewolves too seriously for too long. Personally, I think it’s a mistake take <i>anything</i> too seriously for too long, but that’s just me. Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph had something to do with that, as well, I think. They tend to lighten things up on their own.<br /><br />Moffett and Keoph first appeared in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Life-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CIYI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411939080&sr=1-1&keywords=night+life+ray+garton" target="_blank"><i><b>Night Life</b></i></a>, the sequel to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Live-Girls-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CK64/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411939131&sr=1-1&keywords=live+girls+ray+garton" target="_blank"><i><b>Live Girls</b></i></a>. They are private investigators who work independently in different cities, but who are sometimes brought together on jobs for bestselling horror novelist Martin Burgess, who has a burning interest in the paranormal, conspiracy theories, UFOs and alien interaction with humans, and just about anything weird. He’s wealthy and he can afford to hire Moffett and Keoph to investigate his unusual interests. Burgess wants to see if any of the things he writes about in his horror fiction are real or have any equivalent in reality. His network of computer geeks has alerted him to rumors of werewolves in a northern California coastal town and he sends Moffett and Keoph to investigate.<br /><br />I like Martin Burgess. In addition to writing, his great talent is enjoying being Martin Burgess. Although he’s fully aware of his eccentricities and how others perceive him because of them, he doesn’t apologize for them.<br /><br />I like Moffett and Keoph, too. They’re smart, funny, and although they’re skeptical of everything Burgess wants them to look into, they’re not as skeptical as they were before they encountered vampires in <i>Night Life</i>. Now their skepticism is mixed with some feelings of fear and dread for what they might encounter. There is a spark of romantic interest between them, but they only see each other when they’re hired for a job by Burgess, so they haven’t pursued it. Yet.<br /><br />Come with Moffett and Keoph to Big Rock, smell the sea air and browse the shops. But don’t be surprised by the weird vibe, the tension in the air. There’s a new order in town, and a new baby has been born. A baby that isn’t interested in milk.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Bestial</i> is available as a trade paperback, for<i><b> </b></i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bestial-Ray-Garton-ebook/dp/B00J90CNFW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411939175&sr=1-1&keywords=bestial+ray+garton" target="_blank">Kindle at Amazon</a>, for <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bestial-ray-garton/1014752477?ean=9781497642577" target="_blank">Nook at Barnes and Noble</a>, and as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bestial/dp/B00BMCTS5I/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374385233&sr=1-2&keywords=bestial+ray+garton+audiobook" target="_blank">an audiobook</a>. To keep up with news and new releases, visit my website at <a href="http://raygartononline.com/">RayGartonOnline.com</a>.</span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-22371384814145705682013-06-16T14:06:00.000-07:002013-06-16T14:23:00.017-07:00Ramblin', Ramblin', Ramblin' 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O9cTaX1nStM/Ub4fzJtZzRI/AAAAAAAAAQk/eLiWFw1AYac/s1600/Hard+Bite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O9cTaX1nStM/Ub4fzJtZzRI/AAAAAAAAAQk/eLiWFw1AYac/s320/Hard+Bite.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It’s been about two months since my last blog because I’ve been huddled over a book that was giving me a lot of trouble as the deadline grew closer and closer. It was a new writing experience for me — they all are, but this one called for me to write in a way I’d never written before — and it tripped me up. I finally finished the book last Tuesday in a writing marathon that lasted all day and all night, and all of Wednesday morning. Then I couldn't sleep, no matter how much I wanted to. I finally managed to drift off around three o'clock on Thursday morning. I learned an invaluable lesson from the experience: I’M TOO DAMNED OLD TO DO THAT ANYMORE! I always feel a bit adrift after a project, a little anchorless until I start the next one. But this time, I’ve felt <i>exhausted</i> and it’s taken me a few days to start feeling human again.<br /><br />Since the last blog, I’ve jotted down some observations and thoughts for the specific purpose of including in another “Ramblin’, Ramblin’, Ramblin’” post. Here are a few of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Is it just me, or are people losing all awareness of their surroundings? Every time I go shopping, it seems that everyone in the store is completely unaware of everyone else in the store. Everyone seems to think they’re the only person in the building, as if they’re Michael Jackson and the grocery store closed down and evacuated all its customers just so they could shop alone and undisturbed.<br /><br />We live in a small town on the outskirts of a Walmart. It’s the closest store to our house, and because Dawn and I tend to keep weird hours, the fact that it’s open 24 hours a day makes it convenient, even though I have nothing but poisonous hatred for that store. But hating Walmart is like hating the weather. It’s pointless. It just gets you worked up for no good reason.<br /><br />Every time I go into that store — although to be fair, it happens in <i>every</i> store these days — I feel like I’m invisible. Everyone is in a bubble that separates them from everyone else. People seem blissfully oblivious to the fact that THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE STORE!<br /><br />I’m serious, if you aren’t careful, they will maim or even <i>kill</i> you while they’re looking for the Gold Bond medicated powder — and it doesn’t even have to be on sale! I don’t care if you’re dressed like Bozo the Clown, they cannot see you. No, scratch that — they <i>will not</i> see you! I’ve been struck by carts and slammed into by people, and most of them don’t even acknowledge that I’m there <i>after</i> we’ve collided. And you know those electronic carts they provide for handicapped people? Those things are a fucking <i>menace</i>! Don’t get me started.<br /><br />But it’s not the store. It’s the people. We’ve become so isolated in our own custom-designed personal bubbles that we remain completely isolated even in a busy grocery store, or any crowd of people. We’re shutting each other out. Doors are slamming and locking, windows are being shuttered. Facebook and Twitter give us the illusion of interaction and human contact, but they’re empty substitutes. It’s as if we’re trying to forget each other.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />When I was a kid, there seemed to be only one expert consulted by talk show hosts and news programs, one woman who would discuss relationships and sex and marital problems seriously and then yuck it up with Paul Lynde and Rose Marie on <i>The Hollywood Squares</i>. She was everywhere, giving calm, reasoned advice, citing experts in various fields to back up that advice. Dr. Joyce Brothers died on May 13 at the age of 85, and it made me feel old because, since the announcement of her death, I’ve encountered people who’d never heard of her, who didn’t know who she was.<br /><br />Dr. Brothers had been out of the spotlight for a long time. Then she showed up in some commercial and I remembered how ubiquitous she used to be. She had the most soothing voice and manner and was always unfailingly polite and respectful to those around her when she appeared on talk show panels. She was the first of the TV psychologists to openly discuss things like abortion, breast cancer, and homosexuality, topics that previously had been taboo on television. She never shamed or bullied anyone on TV and expressed only interest and concern for others.<br /><br />That’s why she’d disappeared for so long. She’d become obsolete. Today’s media advice-givers are largely assholes. Why? Because to become a recognized figure in the media today, it seems you <i>have</i> to be an asshole or no one will pay attention to you. I’m of the opinion that people like “Dr.” Phil and “Dr.” Laura should be publicly flogged. I think things like the stocks should be brought back for people like Dr. Drew Pinsky, who stopped being a doctor of any kind long, long ago and has been nothing but a media whore for years.<br /><br />Dr. Joyce Brothers was the butt of a lot of jokes because she was <i>everywhere</i>. It was often said that she would attend the opening of an envelope. She enjoyed her celebrity, no doubt about it, but she took her position as a source of advice and information very seriously. She kept up with the latest research and always turned to a long list of experts in various fields for her source material. I’m sure she was horrified by the likes of the lumbering bully, “Dr.” Phil or that simpering exploiter of addicts, Dr. Drew. She was a class act. Her passing is more than just the loss of an intelligent, gentle woman who always had a helpful word for everyone. It also marks the passing of people in the media that we could respect, look up to, and admire. Now all we’ve got are assholes.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I’m reading a book called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Bite--9/dp/0985578645/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371414396&sr=1-1&keywords=hard+bite+anonymous-9" target="_blank">Hard Bite</a> by a woman who writes under the pseudonym Anonymous-9. I haven’t enjoyed a new novel this much in a long time. It’s dark and funny and gritty and shocking, and the writing is tight and compelling, and I don’t look forward to reading the last page because I'm going to hate to see it end.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Hard Bite</i> is about Dean Drayhart, a paralyzed, wheelchair-bound hit-and-run victim who has devoted his life to killing hit-and-run drivers. But because of his condition, he can’t do it himself. He needs help. That’s where his adorable but deadly capuchin monkey Sid comes in. No, you didn't misread that sentence. Sid the monkey is the killer.<br /><br />It’s doubtful that you’ve read a book quite like <i>Hard Bite</i> and I recommend that you read it now so you'll be ready for Anonymous-9's followup. She's a fiercely original and witty writer and I look forward to reading more of her work.</span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-48832453337127055452013-04-18T20:30:00.003-07:002013-04-18T20:30:49.304-07:00It's Noisy Inside A Writer's Head<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My biggest complaint about the job of writing is that you can’t walk away from it. I can’t, anyway. Most jobs aren’t like that. You go to the office, or the factory, or the strip club, wherever you work, and you do your job for the allotted amount of time, and then you go home. You leave the job and go do something else. I’ve never been able to do that. I’m probably better at it than I used to be — I should be, I’ve been at this for about thirty years — but I still haven’t mastered the ability to stop writing, walk away from the desk, and go do something else. I mean, I do that, but I’m unable to completely leave the work behind. It’s still going on in my head.<br /><br />Right now, I’m working on an extremely difficult project that’s driving me crazy. I’m behind, the deadline’s approaching, and I can’t help feeling that I’d be able to handle it a lot better if, for just a little while, I could <b>STOP THINKING ABOUT IT</b>! But that’s not how writing works.<br /><br />Once I get a project going, it’s stuck in my head. I may walk away from the desk, but the characters are still right where they always are, in my head, doing the things I’ve made them do. They’re solving problems, or <i>creating</i> problems, or they’re stuck in a problematic loop that, for whatever reason, I can’t solve.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Right now, I’ve got about a dozen characters running around in my head trying to survive a hurricane, a deadly virus, and each other, and they don’t take breaks. They can’t! They’re dealing with the horrible situations I’ve put them into, some of which I’m not sure how to get them <i>out</i> of, and wherever I go, whatever I’m trying to do, they’re in my head trying to survive, or kill somebody, or kill each other, and <b>THEY WON’T SHUT UP</b>! How the hell am I supposed to sleep with all of that crap going on?<br /><br />The result is that I’m often distracted, preoccupied, unaware of my surroundings. I might be sitting in the living room staring at the TV, but that doesn’t mean I’m watching or listening to it. I might wander through the house slowly late at night as if I don’t know where I am. I do, but it might not seem that way. I might be in the middle of a conversation with someone when the people in my head have a breakthrough and solve a problem, or discover a new layer to the story, which means I'm not longer in the conversation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you live with a working writer, you know what I mean. You’ve seen it first hand. You’re probably nodding your head as you read this.<br /><br />This is one of the reasons people think writers are weird. It’s not that <i>we</i> are necessarily weird — yeah, okay, I admit, most of us are in one way or another — but what we <i>do</i> is weird. I suppose that in order to <i>want</i> to do what we do, you have to be a little weird in the first place, because so much of it is sitting in a room alone and writing. But even when we leave that room, we’re <i>still</i> writing, whether we want to or not, which is a part of this job that <i>makes</i> us weirder than we were before we started doing it.<br /><br />Are you a writer who has this problem? If so, how do you handle it? Do you live with a writer who has this problem? If so, does it make you crazy or are you used to it by now? Share your solutions and funny stories in the comments below.</span><br />
RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-22553212986711797802013-03-13T20:21:00.001-07:002013-03-13T20:21:30.126-07:00Ramblin', Ramblin', Ramblin'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I haven’t blogged in a while because I’m working on a new book with a looming deadline and it has consumed most of my life lately. I’ll be able to discuss the project in detail soon. When I’m involved in a book, especially one that has a quick deadline, I tend to become somewhat useless. My brain never stops working on it, so no matter what I’m doing, there’s always a lot of distracting activity going on in my head. Sometimes I’m surprised other people can’t <i>hear</i> it. I have a tendency to utter baffling non sequiturs or spontaneously retreat into my head in the middle of a conversation, and I spend more time than usual asking myself why the hell I came into the kitchen, or the living room, or the hall closet. Does that ever happen to you? You get up, walk into the kitchen with a specific purpose in mind, but by the time you get there, the purpose has drifted away like a puff of smoke over St. Peter's Basilica and you’re left standing there wondering what the hell it was. This happens to me with more frequency the older I get, but when I’m deep in a book, its frequency becomes a nuisance.<br /><br />I’ve also been keeping weirder hours than usual. I’ve always been a night person, but lately, I’m still in the office at four and five in the morning. Normally, I prefer to be asleep by then, but when things are rolling at the keyboard, I don’t want to stop. Having to set the clocks ahead an hour did <i>not</i> help this situation. I found myself still up and wide awake when Dawn left for work at a little after seven on Monday morning, watching old second-season <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LOdQylbfCA" target="_blank"><i>Twilight Zone</i></a> episodes and waiting for my brain to quiet down enough to sleep. The cats loved it, though. I’m usually asleep when Dawn leaves for work, which means there’s no one around to show them obeisance until I get up, and there’s nothing for them to do but nap or lick themselves. When Dawn left on Monday, I planted myself on the couch for more Rod Serling weirdness and was suddenly surrounded by a needy, purring cloud of pleasantly surprised cats. In spite of my preoccupation with the current project, I’ve been doing some other things lately. ...<br /><br /><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I just finished reading Carl Hiaasen’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Star-Island-Carl-Hiaasen/dp/B009D8SRWS" target="_blank"><i>Star Island</i></a> from 2010. If you’ve never read Hiaasen, I urge you to do so. The <i>Los Angeles Times</i> called him “an Old Testament moralist disguised as a comedian” because in his frantic and absurd Florida-based novels, cold, hard justice is unfailingly doled out to those who deserve it. But unlike the Old Testament, that justice comes in hilarious and sometimes delightfully gruesome forms and it always makes sense. His prose remains tight and punchy as he piles on layer upon layer of crazy characters and increasingly complex and berserk plot developments, so no matter how close the whole thing might seem to spinning completely out of control, Hiaasen is always solidly in charge. He’s a writer who regularly makes me burst into laughter that sometimes goes on a little longer than it should. In <i>Star Island</i>, for example, he writes that a character who’s just been zapped with an electric cattle prod “made a sound like a chicken going under the wheels of a truck.” Cracked me up. This is his best novel in some years and I strongly recommend it.<br /><br />We have so many books in our house that deciding what to read next can be stroke-inducing. It’s like choosing a movie on Netflix streaming or off the shelf in our movie room. I probably could watch several movies in the time that I’ve spent trying to decide what to watch on Netflix, or standing in our movie room staring at the thousands of movies on the shelves. Sometimes I look at the pile of books I intend to read and wish there were some way I could read them all at once. No matter how long I live, I know that, at the end of my life, one of my biggest regrets will be not having time to read all the books I wanted to read.<br /><br />I’ve been fascinated lately by the story of H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who used the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago as his hunting grounds. Dawn is currently reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Devil-White-City-Madness-Changed/dp/0375725601/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363221445&sr=1-1&keywords=the+devil+in+white+city" target="_blank"><i>The Devil in White City</i></a> by Erik Larson, and I’ve recently watched a couple of documentaries on the subject. I vaguely remembered that Robert Bloch had written a novel based on the story of Holmes, but I couldn’t remember the title. I launched an expedition to see if we had the book somewhere in the house. Sure enough, I found it. The edition of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Gothic-Robert-Bloch/dp/0812515722/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363221582&sr=1-1&keywords=american+gothic+robert+bloch" target="_blank"><i>American Gothic</i></a> that I have was published in 1975 by Fawcett with one of those standard gothic woman-in-peril paperback covers that were so prevalent back then. I think I read the book ages ago when I was a kid, possibly before I was old enough to appreciate it, but I'm not sure, so that’s what I’m reading right now. I’ve only finished the first chapter so far, but once again, I am blown away by Bloch’s deft economy with words and his ability to evoke so much imagery with so little description.<br /><br /><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not since <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0lvfWOk9qw" target="_blank"><i>Boston Legal</i></a> have I been as addicted to a TV show as I am to the Netflix original series <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULwUzF1q5w4" target="_blank"><i>House of Cards</i></a>. This show is <i>delicious</i>, like some dark, rich dessert you know you shouldn’t eat but can’t resist. I was hooked immediately, in part by Kevin Spacey’s juicy performance as Congressman Francis Underwood. Spacey is always fun to watch, but here, he so clearly relishes his role that he’s even more riveting than usual. Underwood knows everybody’s secrets and where all the bodies are buried and he uses that knowledge to get what he wants, whatever that might be at the moment. He and his wife Claire, played by Robin Wright, are a couple of web-weaving spiders who are prepared to do whatever (and whomever) is necessary to achieve their goals. Underwood sometimes breaks TV's "fourth wall" by addressing us directly to let us in on his schemes and fill us in on how things <i>really</i> work in the halls of power. This device makes all the devious plotting even more fun.<br /><br />I’m no Washington insider, of course, but from what I <i>do</i> know (combined with all the things I’ve always <i>suspected</i>), <i>House of Cards</i> feels like one of the more brutally accurate depictions of our government. Remember Aaron Sorkin’s turn-of-the-century White House soap <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ah34t_Sdis" target="_blank"><i>The West Wing</i></a>? It was a great show, but if it were put in a cage with <i>House of Cards</i>, it wouldn’t last two minutes. And there’d be a lot of blood. <i>The West Wing</i> was about morality, about doing the right thing. In <i>House of Cards</i>, corruption is the default position and it’s a given that just about everyone is on the take in one way or another.<br /><br />A remake of a 1990 BBC miniseries based on the novel by Michael Dobbs, the show has some talented writers, like Rick Cleveland, whose credits include <i>The West Wing, Six Feet Under</i>, and <i>Mad Men</i>, and directors like David Fincher, Joel Schumacher, and Carl Franklin. My only complaint is the overuse of the phrase “the American people” — it’s used once in the first season. I firmly believe that phrase is never used in Washington, D.C., unless cameras are rolling, because what goes on there seems to have little or nothing to do with “the American people” and everything to do with the accumulation of power and the covering of asses. Netflix made all 13 episodes of the first season available for streaming on February 1 so you don’t have to wait a week for the next episode, and it’s such an addictive show that it’s extremely tempting to watch all 13 episodes back to back.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>House of Cards</i> is brilliantly entertaining, but it also made me angry. It should make everyone angry. Because in the United States, you and I are the government, we determine who takes office, and <i>this</i> is what we’ve allowed our government to become. We point our fingers and complain about all the other politicians, but for some reason, we all want <i>our</i> favorite politicians from <i>our</i> political party to remain in office because, for whatever reason, we think he or she isn’t like all the others and only the <i>other</i> political party is a problem. We really need to wake the hell up.<br /><br /><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I came into the office today and turned on the TV, there was nothing on but the goddamned <a href="http://i.imgur.com/87lEfme.png" target="_blank">papal conclave</a>. It was everywhere. And it was being covered in a way that strongly suggested I should not only be interested but sitting on the edge of my seat biting my fingernails. I didn't even know who was competing, and I hadn't even watched the auditions — I haven't watched that show since they fired Paula Abdul. On the screen, a vast ocean of people had gathered to see who would be the next CEO of the world’s largest organization of child rapists and their protectors. By the time I joined the festivities, white smoke had already puffed out of the chimney, so a pope had been chosen and everyone was waiting for him to be introduced. I flipped around the channels looking for the coverage that was being hosted by Joan Rivers — I knew it had to be out there somewhere, because <i>that</i> was the kind of coverage this event was getting, like the biggest show business event since the O.J. trial, and I wanted to hear Joan had to say about what the new pope was wearing.<br /><br />Given everything we now know about the Catholic church, it seemed to me that all those people gathered outside St. Peter’s Basilica should be angrily <i>dismantling</i> the place. But instead, they all cheered when it was announced that the new pope would be some old fart from Argentina. Afterward, everywhere I turned I found only post-game shows with everyone analyzing the whole thing. So I turned off the TV.<br /><br />If you’re wondering why there is <i>still</i> smoke coming out of that chimney, it’s because Cardinal Snoop Dogg is visiting from the states.<br /><br /><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Dawn and I rarely go the movies these days, and once a movie I want to see becomes available at home, it usually takes me a while to get to it, so I’m typically way behind when it comes to current movies. I only recently watched <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8K9AZcSQJE" target="_blank"><i>The Artist</i></a>, which won the Best Picture Oscar more than a year ago. I’ll probably see the new winner, <i>Argo</i>, sometime next year.<br /><br />I recently watched <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWX34ShfcsE" target="_blank"><i>Drive</i></a>, mostly because I was eager to see Albert Brooks’s Oscar-nominated performance as a villain. Brooks is a comedy genius who’s been making me laugh since I was a kid. He’s also a great director who started out making <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF7F57JY1OI" target="_blank">short films</a> for <i>Saturday Night Live</i> in the 1970s. He’s written, directed, and starred in some of the funniest movies out there, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KtAzt9LGsI" target="_blank"><i>Real Life</i></a>, <a href="http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/220698/Modern-Romance-Original-Trailer-.html" target="_blank"><i>Modern Romance</i></a>, and <a href="http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/456066/Lost-in-America-Original-Trailer-.html" target="_blank"><i>Lost in America</i></a>. I had to see what kind of villain he would play. I was blown away — not only by Brooks’s portrayal of a ruthless businessman, but by the whole movie.<br /><br />It felt like I was watching a movie made in the 1970s or early 1980s. It quietly took its time setting up its story and introducing its characters, and then it kicked my teeth down my throat. I'd barely noticed Ryan Gosling until I saw this movie. He has some Steve McQueen in him, with a James Caan vibe, but they make up a style that’s all his own in <i>Drive</i>, where he plays a guy who says very little, but means what he says. It’s a very violent movie, but it’s the right kind of violence. It takes its violence seriously. It made me squirm and grunt and even look away briefly. Director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t wallow in the violence because he doesn’t seem to enjoy it, but he doesn’t shrink away from it, either. And it features another fine performance by Bryan Cranston. I’ve been a fan of his work since the daytime soap opera <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92NtepDq52s" target="_blank"><i>Loving</i></a>, which I watched faithfully for a full year after seeing the pilot in 1983.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Drive</i> is a hard-edged action thriller that has some real humanity. Sure, there are great car chases and plenty of violent action, but it is, first and foremost, a movie about people, which makes us <i>care</i> about the car chases and action because we’re emotionally invested.<br /><br />I have not seen any of Refn’s other work yet, but he’s a director I will watch from now on. I’m especially excited about the fact that he’s remaking <i>Logan’s Run</i>. I’m hoping he will remain true to the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The 1976 movie starring Michael York was a lot more bright and light-hearted than the dark, disturbing novel, which has a much better movie in it. I'm hoping Refn will make that movie.<br /><br /><br /><br />What kind of writer would I be if I got through a pointless, rambling blog post like this without plugging my work? A whole bunch of my novels are now available as audiobooks! <i>Meds, Live Girls, Night Life, Ravenous, Bestial, Trade Secrets, Pieces of Hate, Scissors, The Loveliest Dead, The Girl in the Basement,</i> and <i>Murder was My Alibi</i> are all available now, with <i>Dark Channel</i> coming on March 29. You can find them all <a href="http://www.audible.com/search/ref=ftx_top_nav_search_1" target="_blank"><b>right here</b></a>. For regular updates like this, keep checking my website, <a href="http://raygartononline.com/"><b>RayGartonOnline.com</b></a><b>.</b></span><br />
<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-32009340678962939032013-01-22T13:28:00.000-08:002013-01-23T01:47:42.077-08:00Serial Killers Are the New Vampires<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the new Fox horror series <i>The Following</i>, Joe Carroll, played by James Purefoy, is both a serial killer and a novelist, two things that have been romanticized and mythologized all out of proportion. (A perfect example of the mythologized writer is Carroll’s idol, Edgar Allan Poe.) Carroll is the villain of the series, and the reason people will keep coming back. Kevin Bacon’s damaged FBI agent Ryan Hardy and all the other characters are really just window dressing. Let’s be honest — this might as well be called <i>The Joe Carroll Show</i>.<br /><br />Carroll is a serial killer with groupies. Maybe it would be more accurate to call them disciples because they carry out his orders while he plots and schemes in prison. While the first episode of <i>The Following</i> was not ideal viewing for dog lovers (if you saw it, you know what I mean), it’s off to a good start. It’s well written, has a fine cast, and overall, it’s a beautiful production. It occurred to me while I watched the show, sitting stiffly on my couch during a tense moment, that serial killers are the new vampires.<br /><br />Not too long ago, the vampire was a scary predator. That was before, as Craig Ferguson puts it, they got sensitive and started sparkling and expressing themselves through their rippling abs. The vampire is now Fabio — a figure of airbrushed romance and teen angst. He’s dark, but in much the same way those teenagers who hang out at Hot Topic are dark — and if you’re fond of the vampire of old, just as annoying. In fiction, it’s hard to successfully dress up the vampire as a scary predator anymore, and the same thing is rapidly happening to the werewolf. If you do, you’ll inevitably hear from some upset female readers who will proclaim, “Your vampires (or werewolves) are <i>scary</i>! I don’t like that!”<br /><br />The position the vampire once held in the horror genre is now held by the serial killer. He is the new boogeyman in horror. But it’s the position that’s new, not the serial killer. He’s been around in horror movies and fiction for decades. Serial killer movies have been popular for a long time. One swept the Oscars more than twenty years ago. Now there are even serial killer comedies. But now he’s come into our homes. First there was <i>Dexter</i>, which has been running since 2006, now <i>The Following</i>, and coming soon are primetime series about Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates. When there are enough serial killer shows on TV for people to have a favorite TV serial killer, you know the serial killer has gone fully mainstream. I’m waiting for a serial killer sitcom. (In fact, I have a pretty good idea for one — if you have any pull in the TV biz, message me.) We Americans love our serial killers. And we should — we’ve produced some of the very best. Along with porn and guns, serial killers are one of the few things we still make, and make <i>well</i>.<br /><br />The vampire of old could manipulate people with hypnosis and/or telepathy. He could turn into a bat, or a wolf, or a creeping mist, and he had superhuman strength. He was, of course, a dead man resurrected. Undead. He drank his victims’ blood to survive, it sustained him. Traditionally, his only weaknesses were sunlight, garlic, and the trappings of Christianity, but those came and went depending on the movie or novel. The vampire usually looked like a human being, but he was a monster with supernatural powers. There was an air of romance about him, but it was dwarfed by his menace.<br /><br />But he is no more. Not really. He used to make women scream, but ever since Anne Rice started writing vampire novels, he’s had to turn swooning women away due to his own exhaustion and bloat, and because, even when you live forever, there just isn't enough time in a day. In other words, he has a new career, his dance card is full and he doesn't have time to be scary anymore.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The serial killer is a human being, a mortal who can be killed. He has no supernatural powers. But ... he might as well. Just as the vampire must drink blood, the mythological serial killer must kill. It is his outlet, his meditation, his happy place, and it sustains him. He is brilliant, a seductive genius whose razor-sharp powers of perception keep him one step ahead of everyone else. Chances are, if you analyze any fictional serial killer story, you’ll probably conclude that he <i>does</i> have supernatural powers, which would be a requirement to do the things most fictional serial killers do. But we don’t think about that much as viewers or readers because we’ve come to expect it. That’s what fictional serial killers are, that’s what they do.<br /><br />Real serial killers are different animals altogether. They are deeply dysfunctional people who always have in their background some combination of abuse — physical, sexual, psychological, or all three — personality disorders, and mental illness, a deadly brew that leaves him with deadly, bloody desires and no conscience. The one who came closest to being a seductive genius was Ted Bundy, and he was just a bright, handsome guy who also happened to be a monster. He fooled a lot of people for a while, but he wasn’t manipulating them like chess pieces on a board. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re not talking about <i>real</i> serial killers. We’re talking about the boogeyman.<br /><br />Some people don’t think serial killer stories qualify as horror because of the absence of the supernatural. I disagree for the reasons above. We have imbued the fictional serial killer with ersatz supernatural powers because the <i>real </i>serial killer scares the hot, steaming shit out of us precisely because he is <i>not</i> supernatural. He’s just one of us. It’s never possible to recognize him for what he is, we only learn about it later, after it’s too late for his victims. Sometimes he’s an odd, quiet loner and sometimes he’s active in local politics and entertains local children by playing a clown. And sometimes he’s a <i>mass</i> killer who walks into a mall or school and opens fire. He is impossible to spot or predict. Because he’s one of us.<br /><br />The vampire grew out of ignorance and superstition. There was a time when people were sometimes buried a little too early, and if they managed to get out of the grave, they probably didn’t look so good. Imagine happening to see someone crawl out of a grave and stagger away looking dirty and sinister. It’s the kind of thing that would stick with you, the kind of thing you’d tell others. There was never a real vampire, of course, but there was a time when the fear of vampires was very real.<br /><br />The fictional serial killer is scary, but he’s scary in the way a movie or novel or TV show is scary — he’s <i>safe</i>. We’ve made him that way. We’ve distanced him from ourselves, made him <i>different</i>. He’s a seductive genius who reads people like cereal boxes and basks in his own evil. We can enjoy the gruesome chills of a Hannibal Lecter movie because he is <i>clearly</i> what we want him to be — <i>not us</i>.<br /><br />The real serial killer is not different from us. He <i>is</i> us. He is somebody’s son, somebody’s friend, maybe somebody’s brother, maybe even somebody’s spouse. Yes, he’s a monster, but he’s a monster who’s also one of us.<br /><br />We <i>had</i> to turn the serial killer into a supernatural boogeyman. The reality is just too horrifying.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-53858255704091440882012-12-30T17:06:00.000-08:002012-12-31T17:19:39.165-08:00Year-End Clearance Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><u><b>25th Anniversary</b></u><br />2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Live-Girls-Ray-Garton/dp/0759239630/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356913081&sr=1-1&keywords=live+girls" target="_blank"><i>Live Girls</i></a>. It was my fourth book, and I’ve written a lot more since, but it’s still the most well known of all my work. I’m often asked if, after all the work I've done in the years since, it’s irritating that my fourth book is still getting so much attention. Absolutely not!<br /><br />In fact, I’m pretty astonished and quite thrilled that a book I began writing 26 years ago on a spare typewriter in the offices of Pinnacle Books right after an <a href="http://preposteroustwaddlecock.blogspot.com/2011/04/live-girls-story-behind-book.html" target="_blank">inspiring visit to a Times Square peep</a> show is still being read and enjoyed. If you’d told me back then that the book would still be selling in 2012, I wouldn’t have believed you. And if you’d told me that all these years later, I’d be working on another book set in the <a href="http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b2173/?si=0" target="_blank"><i>Live Girls</i></a> universe and featuring some of the same characters from that book, I wouldn’t have believed you.<br /><br />No matter how many books I write, knowing that people are still enjoying this one could never be irritating. So happy anniversary, sexy New York vampires!<br /><br /><br /><u><b>Overkill</b></u><br />When I was a boy, my mother took me into a new book store in town owned by a friend of hers, a woman named Jean with whom Mom had worked as a nurse. (I didn’t know it at the time, but she was also the cousin of the father of the woman I would later marry.) Jean said to me, “I have something for you.” She took a book off the shelf and handed it to me, saying, “You can have this one.” She added with a chuckle, “But then you’ll have to come back and buy the trilogy.” She gave me <i>The Hobbit</i>. I burned through it quickly and loved every second of it. I was not as fond of the trilogy. While <i>The Hobbit</i> is a light, quick tale of adventure, a children’s book, the trilogy is a much more dense epic fantasy that takes itself far more seriously. I read it and enjoyed it, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as <i>The Hobbit</i>. While everyone else was waiting for movie adaptations of the trilogy, I was waiting for a movie adaptation of <i>The Hobbit</i>.<br /><br />Be careful what you wish for.<br /><br />Making a trilogy of movies based on the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> trilogy makes perfect sense, of course. Making a trilogy of three-hour movies out of <i>The Hobbit</i> makes sense only if all you care about is the buttloads of money you can wring out of it. A trilogy will give us plenty of time to get intimately familiar with every detail of the hobbits’ lives, right down to their personal possessions, each of which will be marketed as collectibles. The Hobbit toothbrush! Hobbit kitchen sponges! I’m kind of surprised there isn’t a trilogy of movie novelizations, as well. Some people have told me the first movie is good. That’s not the point. Saying the first of three three-hour-long movies of <i>The Hobbit</i> is good is like filling a stadium with hot oil to deep fry a turkey and then saying, “But the turkey is <i>delicious</i>!”<br /><br />Peter Jackson is a wonderful director and I’ve enjoyed his work in the past, but I’ll sit this one out, thanks.<br /><br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><u><b><i>Shadowland</i></b></u><br />I’m rereading Peter Straub’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shadowland-Peter-Straub/dp/0425188221/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356913637&sr=1-1&keywords=shadowland+peter+straub" target="_blank"><i>Shadowland</i></a> right now. I first read the book when it was published in 1980. I was in high school at the time, a Seventh-day Adventist boarding academy, so I had to hide the book. It was contraband. It disrupted my life because I didn’t want to put it down. When I picked it up again recently, I expected to be disappointed. So often the books we read in our youth don’t hold up in our adulthood.<br /><br />This one is better now than it was back then. I’m not sure why — maybe simply because I’m older and more mature and no longer a teenager — but I’m appreciating the book a lot more this time, seeing more in it than I did before. If you’ve never read it, I strongly recommend it. I recommend anything by Straub, but this one really stands out<i> </i>and has never gotten the recognition it deserves.<br /><br /><br /><u><b>WTF TV?</b></u><br />For the past couple of months, we’ve been getting IFC (Independent Film Channel) for free. We have one of those cheap, crappy packages that doesn’t include IFC, and I’ve missed it. I tuned in after not having access to it for almost two years to find a marathon of Star Trek movies. Wait ... Star Trek movies? Are they independent films? I think not. Neither were any of the movies I've been seeing on IFC, which includes a Christmas time marathon of Jason movies.<br /><br />What the hell is going on with TV?<br /><br />Remember when the History Channel featured programming about history? Those days are gone. Now it offers <i>Ax Men</i>, <i>American Pickers</i>, <i>Pawn Stars</i>, and just in case you can’t get enough of that last one, <i>Cajun Pawn Stars</i>. Once in a great while, it will air something about history, but only if it has Nazis in it. The History Channel just loves its Nazis. And aliens.<br /><br />Remember the Sci-Fi Channel? They had to change it to “SyFy” because its original sci-fi programming became so polluted with wrestling and pranks and “reality” shows in which bullshit artists run around in the dark hunting for ghosts.<br /><br />The Food Network used to feature cooking shows. Now it’s nothing but overproduced, repetitious cooking <i>competitions</i> to see just how whiny and nasty and unpleasant people can get over a goddamned cupcake contest.<br /><br />TLC used to be The Learning Channel. It was founded as the Appalachian Community Service Network by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and NASA as an educational channel that was distributed for free by NASA satellite. It was privatized in 1980 and became The Learning Channel, or TLC. Its programming was made up of documentary content about everything from nature and science to cooking, from current events to history, and it did a better job of it than its rival, The Discovery Channel. By 1991, the Financial News Network (FNN) and Infotechnology Inc. owned 51% of TLC, but FNN went into bankruptcy that year (there are several jokes there, but I’ll let you come up with them yourself). The Discovery Channel bought up the TLC shares held by FNN and Infotech, and that’s when the channel’s crapward spiral began. Now it has come to provide what people used to have to go to the circus to see — little people, fat people, polygamists, a two-headed woman, preacher’s wives, brides from hell, virgins, hoarders, people who can’t seem to stop having babies, and, of course, Honey Boo Boo. (Let that be a lesson to us — when something, anything, is privatized, its original goals and intent immediately take a backseat to profit at any cost.) Now TLC stands for TLC and nothing more. Move along, nothing to learn here.<br /><br />The Discovery Channel is no better. Gone are the nature documentaries and shows about science and medicine. Now we’ve got <i>Amish Mafia</i>, <i>Texas Car Wars</i>, <i>American Guns</i>, <i>Outlaw Empires</i>, booze, bikers, fishermen, ghosthunters, competing gold miners, ancient aliens, conspiracy theories, and a guy who drinks his own urine while pretending to be stranded in the wilderness with a full crew and provisions.<br /><br />Now IFC no longer focuses on independent movies. IFC could accurately be called the <i>Portlandia</i> Channel. Along with that show, it features something called <i>Whisker Wars</i> (I don't want to know, really, so please don't fill me in), reruns of <i>Malcolm in the Middle</i> and endless airings of <i>Trapped in the Closet</i>, along with lots of movies that couldn’t be further away from “independent.”<br /><br />I don’t know what bothers me more — what I just described above or the fact that nobody really seems to notice or mind. This has made channel-surfing a kind of self-inflicted punishment, and it’s why I watch very little broadcast television these days.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Back in the 1980s, American television audiences loved watching the rich wallow in their wealth and flaunt their immorality. Millions faithfully followed the exploits of the Ewings and the Carringtons and lapped up all those big, beautiful homes, fully stocked limos and globe-hopping lifestyles. Shows like <i>Dallas</i>, <i>Dynasty</i>, <i>Falcon Crest</i>, and <i>Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous</i> took up a lot of network airtime. Now we watch shows about people who have jobs. Any jobs, it doesn’t matter. Truckers, bakers, fishermen, chefs, as long as they’re employed. Employment is the new porn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><u><b>Stop Apologizing!</b></u><br />Jon Stewart is still publicly apologizing for his performance in <i>The Faculty</i>, the 1998 movie directed by Robert Rodriguez. Am I the only person in the world who liked that movie? Most people seem to laugh or roll their eyes when it comes up in conversation. I thought it had a nice ‘50s monster movie vibe. You know what I mean — the kind of movie that has a silly premise, but makes it work and manages to suck you in no matter how silly you thought it sounded at first. For example, the idea of giant ants invading Los Angeles might make you chuckle, but <i>Them!</i> is a pretty damned good movie that makes you believe those ants. That’s what <i>The Faculty</i> was for me. It has some laughs and some solid chills, and a great cast of character actors like Piper Laurie, Christopher McDonald, Daniel von Bargen, Bebe Neuwirth — and yes, Jon Stewart, who plays Professor Edward Furlong. <i>The Faculty</i> is a rarity these days, in any genre, in that it entertains without making the assumption that its audience has sustained some kind of brain damage.<br /><br />And yet, Jon Stewart is <i>still</i> apologizing for it! I don’t know why, because I thought he was pretty good. And no one should apologize for the movie, which is a fine piece of work. If Stewart wants to apologize for something, he can start with that Adam Sandler movie <i>Big Daddy</i>. Where’s my apology for <i>that</i> piece of shit, huh? I’ll never get <i>that</i> hour and a half back.<br /><br /><br /><i><u><b>American Horror Story</b></u></i><br />I battle with insomnia, and Netflix streaming is the insomniac’s best friend. <i>American Horror Story</i>, on the other hand, is not. I’ve been watching the first season of this series, which airs on FX (yet another channel our crappy satellite package doesn’t include), and I can’t remember the last time I was this impressed with made-for-TV horror. The horror genre hasn’t always worked well on broadcast TV in the past because broadcast TV has tended to be family friendly, which has resulted in a lot of watered-down horror. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. This is a disturbing series that tells a different story each season. I’m almost finished with the first season and I love the way it has managed to tell a haunted house story that feels fresh and unpredictable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The writing is outstanding and does a good job of messing with our heads. It’s not the show to watch if your goal is getting to sleep, though. It’s frightening and upsetting, and so far, there has been one moment when I slapped a hand over my eyes because I didn’t want to see something. The glimpse I got has stayed with me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm not prepared to commit to this, but Jessica Lange <i>may</i> be scarier than Glenn Close. I haven't decided yet.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>American Horror Story</i> reminds me of the made-for-TV movies that aired on the networks from 1969 to 1975. Most were in the horror genre, but even those that weren’t told dark and unsettling stories in dark and unsettling ways, and they usually had downer endings. They had low budgets and added to the atmosphere and tension with unique, creepy music and bizarre camera work. I’m seeing some of those same techniques in<i> American Horror Story</i>, and I like it. I’m also enjoying the use of familiar music from horror movies. If I’d heard about that before seeing the show — that it used music from other genre sources — I probably would have said, “That’s just lazy.” But I have to admit, it’s done selectively and with excellent judgment, and it works.<br /><br />Among the names in the opening credits is Jennifer Salt. I first noticed her in one of those creepy TV movies I referred to earlier, <i>Gargoyles</i> from 1972. She popped up in a lot of TV shows and movies and was always a welcome presence. I especially enjoyed her work in the sitcom <i>Soap</i> and the creepy-as-hell Brian de Palma movie <i>Sisters</i>. Her father, Hugo Salt, blacklisted in 1950, wrote movies like <i>Day of the Locusts</i> and <i>Serpico</i>, and won Oscars for <i>Midnight Cowboy</i> and <i>Coming Home</i>. After walking away from acting, Jennifer took her father’s path and started writing for television in 1998. She began to produce as well during her years on <i>Nip/Tuck</i>, and now she’s doing both on what is maybe the best horror TV series I’ve ever seen. It’s been an interesting career to watch.<br /><br /><br /><u><b>So Long, 2012!</b></u><br />For most of the people I know, 2012 has been a lousy year. It sure has sucked cosmic ass for Dawn and me. But things seem to be turning around. Dawn finally got a good job after two years of being unemployed, and I have a new publisher, so things are looking up.<br /><br />I want to thank my readers, who’ve kept buying my books while patiently waiting for a new one (it’s coming!). Also, thanks to the people on Facebook and Twitter who put up with my bizarre sense of humor between bouts of self-promotion. I hope 2013 is a better year for all of us.</span><br />
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<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1293492602513569232.post-51146774627648998562012-12-16T04:04:00.000-08:002012-12-20T18:41:11.249-08:00Santa Claus in the Movies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9lzmKwKH4rc/UM2oizqRsJI/AAAAAAAAAOw/vPiB0tcSPq0/s1600/Miracle+on+34th+Street.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9lzmKwKH4rc/UM2oizqRsJI/AAAAAAAAAOw/vPiB0tcSPq0/s320/Miracle+on+34th+Street.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There have been many charming movies featuring Santa Claus. Fortunately, all of them have been Christmas movies. It just wouldn’t work if Santa showed up in a movie about Valentine’s Day or Easter — although in a perfect world, Mel Gibson would have cast him as the guy who whipped Jesus to a bloody pulp in his gay BDSM Easter porn flick, <i>The Passion of the Christ</i>. Sure, there have been a few horror movies featuring someone posing as Santa Claus that would make appropriate Halloween viewing, but they’re not specifically Halloween movies. Santa mostly confines himself to secular Christmas movies featuring music written by Jewish people.<br /><br />One of my favorite Santa Claus movies is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ce_op2qG24" target="_blank"><i>Miracle on 34th Street</i></a> from 1947. It’s the first live-action movie I remember seeing in which Santa was depicted as a real person. Edmund Gwenn, who was such a charming Kris Kringle, had a big influence on my idea of Santa as a small child.<br /><br />We have the movie on DVD, but I haven’t watched it yet this year. A couple of days ago, I was happy to discover that it was playing on AMC. When I turned it on, I got a queasy feeling. Something was wrong. Everything was a sickening shade of pink, as if the movie had been shot through a thin filter of Pepto Bismol. Then I became aware of the problem: it was the colorized version.<br /><br />I had almost forgotten about colorization. At least, I hadn’t thought about it in many years. The period of years during which I did not think about the colorization of black-and-white movies was a peaceful one. Because I did not think about the colorization of black-and-white movies.<br /><br />When Ted Turner, owner of the MGM film library, announced back in the 1980s that he was going to colorize <i>Citizen Kane</i>, a genuine effort should have been made to have him committed. He later said it was a joke and he’d had no intention of colorizing the classic, and even though he never did, I didn't believe him at the time. But he colorized <i>other</i> classics. Movies shot in black and white were not meant to be shown in color. Otherwise, they would have been shot in color. Because Turner was incapable of grasping that nugget of logic, movie buffs had a great deal of hostility toward him back then. But the fad didn’t last long and, mercifully, it all faded away.<br /><br />Before I turned on AMC the other day, decades had passed since I’d last thought about or seen a colorized movie. I don’t know if Ted Turner had anything to do with colorizing <i>Miracle on 34th Street</i>, but I blamed him, anyway. All that Ted Turner hostility came rushing back. I felt myself tensing up, clenching my teeth, wishing that all kinds of creatively horrible things would happen to Turner. (For those not familiar with it, this is very similar to the hostility felt by many fans toward Joel Schumacher for putting nipples on Batman’s suit — something <i>else</i> I haven’t thought about in a long time, so now I’ve just pissed myself off again, dammit.) Then I remembered that he’d been married to Jane Fonda for ten years and figured the poor son of a bitch has probably suffered enough.<br /><br />John Favreau’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umy56QgxCY4" target="_blank"><i>Elf </i></a>is a more recent example of Santa being depicted as a real person, portrayed in this case by Lou Grant. Um, I’m sorry, I meant <i>Edward Asner</i>. But Santa is overshadowed by Buddy the elf, played by Will Ferrell. Your enjoyment of <i>Elf</i> will depend a great deal on your enjoyment of Will Ferrell. I know many people who think he's about as funny as a pilonidal cyst. He makes me laugh when he’s in the right role, and I think the role of Buddy fits him perfectly. My problem with the movie is another actor in the cast. <i>Elf</i> is a light holiday comedy, but casting James Caan as Buddy’s father transformed it into a light holiday comedy that could, at any moment, explode with brutal violence and bloodshed. Or, at the very least, a bunch of F-bombs.<br /><br />This isn’t the only light comedy James Caan has been in, either, which is <i>bizarre</i> when you think about it. Ever see a 1982 romantic comedy called <i>Kiss Me Goodbye</i>? Sally Field plays Kay, a widow who’s about to marry Rupert, played by Jeff Bridges. So far, so good, right? The ghost of Kay’s dead husband, a light-hearted song-and-dance man named Jolly, comes back to prevent the marriage. James Caan plays Jolly. Did you get that? James Caan plays a dancer named <i>Jolly</i> — and that name is <i>not</i> meant to be ironic. He tap dances. No, really, I’m not kidding. Holy <i>crap</i>, that movie was exhausting! I kept waiting for Caan to drop the ruse and knock Sally Field’s teeth down her throat.<br /><br />I once dated a woman who claimed to have lived with James Caan, and she said every time they had sex, when he came he would spit in her face. I later learned she was a pathological liar and that nothing she’d told me was true, but the point is that I <i>believed</i> it at the time. Because it was James Caan. He’s a scary guy. He is not light comedy material. And yet he starred in Neil Simon's <i>Chapter Two</i>.<br /><br />But unlike <i>Kiss Me Goodbye</i>, I’ve seen <i>Elf</i> several times now, and I no longer flinch when it looks like Caan might be making a move to beat the shit out of Buddy. It’s a funny, amiable holiday movie.<br /><br />I don’t mean to be a Grinch, but I have a problem with Santa movies — specifically those movies in which everyone learns that Santa really exists and really has a toy factory run by elves at the North Pole. These movies share a flaw that, as far as I know, has never been addressed. It doesn’t seem to bother people, and I imagine most haven’t even noticed it. But as a writer, I am annoyed by stories that contain a logical flaw and then try to ignore it by never mentioning it and just hoping nobody will notice. <i>Elf</i> is a perfect example.<br /><br />Walter (Caan) and Emily (Mary Steenburgen) have a son named Michael (Daniel Tay) of about ten or eleven years of age. When Walter and Emily meet Buddy, Walter’s biological son, at first they think he’s a little goofy in the head because he insists he’s an elf from the North Pole. Later, when they learn he’s telling the truth, they also learn that he works in Santa’s workshop making toys to be delivered by Santa to all the children of the world at Christmas.<br /><br />Why don’t Walter and Emily already know Santa exists? If he delivers toys to all the children of the world every Christmas, there should be something under the tree for Michael that was not put there by Walter and Emily. I think it would be pretty hard to miss an extra gift under the tree, especially if it was the toy Michael had been requesting from Santa. It seems like there would have to be <i>some</i> communication between Santa and parents. You wouldn't want to give your child the same toy Santa had brought, would you? Now <i>that</i> would be awkward. I would think that discovering that Santa is real — especially for parents — would create more questions than it answered.<br /><br />I don’t know how the other Santa movie fathers would react to learning that Santa is real, but I can easily imagine how James Caan would react.<br /><br />“What the hell is this? You’re<i> real</i>? I mean, you gotta toy factory up at the North Pole, the sleigh and the reindeer, the whole show, and you’re tellin’ me you deliver toys to all the children of the world at Christmas? Then where the fuck you been, huh? <i>Huh</i>? Where the fuck you <i>been</i>? What about all those Christmas Eves I spent tryin’ to figure out how to assemble the kid's fuckin’ toys until five in the morning? Huh? What was <i>that</i>? And then <i>you</i> get the credit for it? After I do all the <i>work</i>?”<br /><br />Caan rushes the fat man, pulls out his piece, levels it with Santa’s forehead and says slowly, “I am the last guy in the world ... that you wanna fuck with. You ain’t been deliverin’ toys. Whatta you up to, huh? You runnin’ drugs? Weapons? Doin’ some human trafficking? ‘Cause I’ll tell ya what you’re <i>not</i> doin’. You’re not deliverin’ any <i>fuckin’ toys</i>!”<br /><br />That’s how I imagine it, anyway.<br /><br />If I were a parent and learned that Santa was real, I would be tempted to sue the lazy bastard. At the very least, I would ask, “Then what the hell have <i>I</i> been doing the last few years?” But that never happens in the movies. The parents always shed their skepticism and embrace the fact that this fat guy has been flying all over the world delivering toys, but for some reason, not to <i>their</i> house. And nobody says, "Oh, god, what <i>else</i> were my parents telling me the truth about?"<br /><br />When you think about the relatively small period of time during which children believe in Santa Claus, it’s pretty amazing how much time, effort and money our culture puts into convincing them of his existence. Movies, TV shows, books, advertisements — they all conspire to maintain for children the belief that Santa Claus is a real, magical guy who has flying reindeer, and those childre will, very soon, figure out, or be told, the truth. It’s a short period of time, but it’s an important process, because in this way, we soften their brains for religion and politics.<br /><br />Do you have a favorite movie Santa? Was there a movie Santa who didn’t work for you? One who frightened you? Let's talk Santa in the comments.</span><br />
<br />RayGartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09973158405226955253noreply@blogger.com1