We’ll be off to see the Fireworks tonight around 8:30 - starts at 9:00 … it’s a sad day for me because it is a year to the day from one of the greatest adventures our old dog, Rocky, had…when the fireworks scared him and I went running through the town, holding a pissing Maltese out at arms length and bellowing for people to get out of the way. At the time, I was less than pleased with the dog…but I sure miss the little guy now. He found some anti-freeze somehow - maybe poisoned by local kids, or maybe an accident…we’ll never know. Anyway, 4th of July makes me think of him.
In honor of the holiday, I put up three more Flash Fiction pieces based on Emoticons. This brings me to 41 free stories here on this website, which most of you who know me will realize is a lot for me to give away unpaid! Maybe someday they will be collected in some other fasion. Today I added in “Tongue,” “Embarassed (#2),” and “kiss”. Hope you enjoy…
On this day in 1937, Amelia Erhardt was officially pronounced missing.
On this day in 1947, an unidentified flying object crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico.
Are there grays among us, or — is Amelia back? If so, where did she, go, and by the way, did she Elvis? The Weekly World News could have made magic out of this, but, alas, they are gone. I miss that weird little paper with Bat Boy on the cover and the world’s largest whatever-of-the-week pictured. Miss it bad.
Meanwhile, the writing world continues to fluctuate in odd directions. I’ve been asked to do the introduction for an upcoming Dark Regions collection of short stories by my buddy and collaborator Steve Saville, which means I’ll be hard pressed to live up to my own recent column over at Storytellers Unplugged, where I spoke about these introductions, praised some by Peter Straub, and those I got from Elizabeth Massie and Brian Hodge, and panned the average introduction for the meaningless tripe and excuse to add an extra signature to a signed limited edition that they tend to be.
That was a long sentence.
Anyway, have that, a blurb request, finishing up reading MAD DOGS by Brian Hodge, which I’m enjoying a lot, and listening to the audio book of THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE by Douglas Preston, who you may remember from a couple of years back when he and his Italian reporter collaborator ran afoul of some big wigs with power as they fought to uncover the horribly botched investigation the Italians strung out over decades while failing to catch this killer. Oddly, the two also seem to have pretty much solved it - using the FBI profile conveniently ignored by the Italians for not matching the suspect du jour - and he’s still running around over there.
That means that when I visited there in the 1990s, the killer was running around - had killed not that far back - and i never even knew it. Florence, of course, is where Hannibal’s old stomping grounds were located. Anyway, more on that later. For now, go think about what actually crashed at Roswell ten years to the day after Amelia disappeared.
Just another update … My column (which they initially titled “Burning Bridges,” after a partial of a story that is included - is up at CHIZINE.COM - COLUMN This time out it’s about using your dreams in fiction - why it works, and why it doesn’t … and an example. The REAL title (that I hope will be up soon) is “Just Because the Dead Babies Have Horns Doesn’t Mean it’s a Story”
Also new today - two Emoticon flash fiction pieces went live - ALIENS and WHISTLING - check them out!
Yesterday was not a good day. In fact, I believe factors were in play all weekend leading up to it…but if you want more details you’ll have to visit STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED where today (Being the first of July) is my day to post. The column is on why, when you have one of THOSE days, you should take notes.
Trish has some great before and after pictures posted of the renovation she just finished on our son Billy’s room. He’s one lucky kid, I’ll tell you. CHECK IT OUT!
Not sure what time the celebrating Candians behind www.chizine.com will awaken and update, but when the new Chizine goes live today, I have a column up there for the new quarter - it’s about taking images from your dreams for your writing, how it works, how it does NOT work - and a snippet of a story I wrote using that technique.
Other than that, Guitar Hero Aerosmith has entered our home and been found fund. The boy-thing is (of course) halfway through all the songs on Expert. I started on hard and got through the first list with no trouble. We’ll see.
Just a quick note - I found the first on-line review of my upcoming novella “The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature” this morning and wanted to share. The review is over at Literary Strange Digest:
“The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & the Currently Accepted Habits of Nature is the latest work from David Niall Wilson and is a much-welcome entry in the neglected sub-genre of backwoods horror.Jasper is skipping work to go catch some catfish at his favorite fishing hole in the town of Old Mill.It’s there he finds the strange corpse of thing with a human’s body and a deer’s head.He seeks help from Cletus J. Diggs, a man of many professions and talents.The two of them begin an investigation that will bring all the dark secrets of Old Mill bubbling to the surface.”
The book is due out in July or early August. Only those who preorder the book will be entered into the drawing for the one-of-a-kind hand-bound Caiman edition of the book. I made it myself…it’s cool..a bit ugly…but very cool. Don’t miss out!
Not sure what to think of the movie we watched last night. It was certainly not my favorite Johnny Depp performance. I read the novel a while back, and I’ve read a lot of things by Hunter S. Thompson, from Rolling Stones articles to Hells Angels. It could just be me, but Depp looked more like Elton John in thie film than Thompson, and the constant effort to continue over-blown physical “tics” was more irritating than entertaining.
Still…there was a lot to like. I think they captured some fo the 1960s mentality quite well, and the tacky, gaudy Las Vegas scenes were perfect. It’s certainly not a movie for the faint of stomach.
Today we’re off to watch Wall-E…whole family outing.
(lol) Trish has been busy. She made a Spore creature just for me…Cornthulu! Below is the movie of him dancing…it’s what spore critters do, I guess (lol).
I think that what has been keeping me so productive over the last year or so is diversity. In the past there have been times when I wrote a lot of things that were very similar, and all that loomed on the horizon was more of the same. That’s a killing blow for creativity. I’ve written before about how difficult it is for series authors to maintain the level of intensity and tension they begin with over the span of many books.
In the last year, I’ve written the memoir of the first portion of a young medical student’s life, a sci-fi style thriller involving Neanderthals and big oil, a novella about a guy named Cletus J. Diggs who lives near the Great Dismal Swamp…begun a novelette set in the south seas, and another about a very different sort of serial killer. The diversity allows me to drop one thing and move on to the next and regain my enthusiasm as I shift gears. If all I had were a couple of similar projects, going from one to the other would just feel like more of the same, and wouldn’t help.
So I guess today’s thought is - diversity rocks. Maybe not TOO Much diversity. Soon Trish and I will be working on our Stargate Atlantis novel…tentatively titled “Brimstone & Salt,” and we’ll have one more place to turn away from it all and disappear into.
A 44 year old woman named Edna Fiedler was found guilty (confessed actually) to taking bogus Nigerian checks from an overseas contact and running one of those stupid scams where people are told they are helping someone overseas, and getting them to cash large checks, then return a portion to the sender. I’m amazed they finally got someone and put them in jail for this, but I still don’t believe this is the most unbelievable thing…the most unbelievable thing to me is that she’d already gottn over 600,000 in checks cashed…meaning there were enough morons out there to make this happen…WAKE UP PEOPLE! Jesus, they DESERVE to lose their money.
It’s been a wacky week in the news, to say the least. A rolling brothel was sidelined in Las Vegas (looking oddly like the one that was shown not long ago on CSI) - North Korea has blown up the cooling tank for their nuclear facility meaning either a: They are hiding all their activity somewhere, b: they already have enough bombs to blow us to kingdom come or c: Rock and Roll and LCD TV won another victory for the west and they are actually coming around … despite wack-job leadership with bad hair and a need of platform shoes.
Heath Ledger (who I remember fondly from A Knight’s Tale, one of my favorite movies) and Conway Wickliffe, a stunt man who died during The Dark Knight’s filming will be getting an on screen tribute at the end of the movie…
The Supreme Court made their presence known…but I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather they’d remained silent. BAD choice on Exxon Valdez, BAD choice on the raping of children…token victory on gun banning (the government that governs least is best, yes?)
I’m happy to be playing golf later today. On the golf course, none of this matters.
Billy turned on the PS3, put Guitar Hero III on hyperspace setting 5, and put a world of hurt on one of the hardest existing songs - The Devil Went Down to Georgia. He got 219,000 points, and I have to say my eyes hardly move fast enough to watch it…
