If You Know About It, It Knows About You...

Want an autographed copy of the trade paperback edition of my new collection, Other Gods, from Dark Regions—for free?

"If you know about it, it knows about you. If you see it, it will come for you."

That's a quote from one of my stories. The title of that story appears in several places on my Web site, including the Other Gods info page. Visit The Realm of Stephen Mark Rainey, find the story's title in the text or contents list of one or more of my books (not in a head or subhead), and click on it. It doesn't appear as a regular link, but you'll know if you find it.

Note: a purchase is required, but I think you'll find it one helluva bargain. Enjoy....

Wampus Cat

A couple of weeks back, I made mention of the Wampus Cat (Grendel? Wampus Cat? Larry Talbot?). Here's the answer:

The Wampus Cat is a critter out of southern folklore—originally eastern Tennessee, I'm told, but the legend also found a comfortable home in the mountains of western North Carolina. When I was a youngster and went to summer camp in the NC mountains, it was easily the most chilling of the many tales that counselors and elderly locals told us to scare us out of our pants. Let it be known that I left at least a drawerful of pants back at Camp Cheerio, circa 1968.

Now, I love me some folklore. The legend tells us that, once upon a time, a young Indian woman, curious about the magical powers of the tribe's medicine man, dressed herself in the skin of a mountain lion and followed him so she could watch him do his thing. Alas, in those distinctly non-feminist days of yore, women were strictly forbidden from witnessing acts of magic. The medicine man caught her and, to punish her for her wicked ways, turned her into a half-woman, half-cat creature, doomed to roam the Appalachian forests from there on out. Eventually, in her misery, she went insane, which—as you might guess—did not bode well for the local population.

Back at camp, nobody knew where the Wampus Cat came from. They only knew that it was real and preyed on youngsters who converged on the NC mountains every summer from points all over the country. My introduction to the Wampus Cat was the story of a couple of young campers who didn't heed their counselors' warnings and wandered into the woods by themselves late one afternoon. They never came back, so a search party went looking for them. Just as the sun was going down, the men came upon a big wall made out of fallen timber, and atop a couple of the posts were the heads of the missing children. About that time, a huge catlike creature that walked on two legs appeared and leaped right at the rescuers. One of them shot the thing several times—which didn't kill it but dissuaded it from attacking just long enough for the men to run to safety—with the monster on their heels the whole way.

The next story was accompanied by photographic evidence. In this one, a number of campers and counselors went for an overnight campout on Snake Island, which was a tiny little island at one end of the local lake (this was also the place where I saw my first Water Moccasin in the wild; a cute little thing). Just at sunset that evening, a rustling noise came from one the lake banks. One of the counselors produced a camera just in time to photograph a huge, catlike creature leaping into the air, onto the island, and then to the opposite lakebank. The photo was posted in the camp's main office, and was frequently passed around to show us kids that, yes, the Wampus Cat was out there, and, no, we ought not wander off anywhere on our own.

Sure, as far as I knew, the blurry photo of the creature silhouetted against the sky might have been some counselor's housecat that he tossed up in the air, but back in those days...holy canoli, it was proof. There really was a Wampus Cat, and that sucker could do some serious leaping. I was so impressed that, when our group went out to Snake Island for an overnight campout, I was not among them. I stayed safe and snug in the cabin that night and listened to great horned owls laughing at me.

I did, however, work up the nerve to sleep out under the stars one night right outside the cabin, along with several other intrepid campers.

Oh, it was a dark night; no stars, no moon; just a lot of nightbirds and insects yammering away. And the sound of something nearby going thump.

Thump. And THUMP! Getting closer and closer.

Yeah, there went one pair of drawers.

Then something went THUMP!—right on my little noggin, and young Mark screamed so loud people heard me at Myrtle Beach, 400 miles away.

Turns out that we had parked our sleeping bags right under an apple tree, and the apples were engaged in a series of Newtonian experiments, to which we were unwitting witnesses.

Apart from that really special photo, I never actually saw hide or hair of the Wampus Cat. But let me tell you, that pussy sure made a man out of me. From that night night on, I've never had the slightest fear of apples. I must wonder if those young campers who were with me could make the same claim.

Hell Is Just Ahead

In my near-daily hunt for geocaches, I'm continually discovering new places in and around Greensboro. There are still miles and miles of trails I haven't gotten to yet, and each trail I find strikes me as more scenic or interesting than the last. Yesterday, I put in three miles on a portion of the Nat Greene trail that I'd never hiked, and today, despite high heat and humidity, I did a good four miles on the Laurel Bluff trail. I'm bushed and a little sore, but the hike was a real experience, and I wish I had taken my camera with me. At one point, I passed a cairn-like pile of stones with an old, rusted tricycle mounted atop them. That's not really something I see all that often.

In these southern woods, beech trees are everywhere, and if you've ever seen a beech, you probably saw lots of initials and messages carved into its trunk. After all, what else is that smooth, gray bark there for? One beech on the Laurel Bluff trail bears the message, "Hell Is Just Ahead," and it's dated 1961. (Needless to say, there's a nearby cache bearing the same title.)

In contrast to the Nat Greene trail, which was brimming with hikers and mountain bikers yesterday, there appeared to be nary a soul besides myself in the woods today. It was remarkably quiet, though the wildlife was plentiful. Saw quite a few deer, rabbits, frogs, a luna moth caterpillar, and...a black squirrel. Now I've seen plenty of gray squirrels and red squirrels, but I've never come upon a black one. Okay, maybe he had been playing under a parked car somewhere and gotten covered in grease, as my dog used to do when I was a kid, who knows? But anyway...he was black.

I saw this harbinger of odd things just as I came upon Hell Is Just Ahead. And right about then, a great horned owl started hooting somewhere nearby. A beautiful, melancholy sound; a little eerie, even. I do love those owls, even if they are not what they seem. Appropriately, I dropped a Twin Peaks postcard into the cache. The next one wasn't too far away, so I decided to bushwhack straight to it rather than return to the trail. This was when things got a little odd.

Apparently, I had entered the wrong coordinates in my GPS for that next cache because I ended up heading south rather than north, which was away from where I knew the cache ought to be. Soon, I came upon the foundation of an old house out in the woods, and then I heard low, furtive voices not too far away. I felt distinctly uncomfortable, so I started back toward the trail, heading due north.

I walked...and walked...and walked...but the trail seemed to have vanished. By this time, I'm starting to feel like I'm in The Blair Witch Project—though in a version cast with a lone dude who is far more dashing and resourceful than the original cast members, and armed with a bamboo whacky stick. I bring up the coordinates to the next cache, which is about a half mile away, and head straight for it. When I get there, I find the trail again. For the rest of the hike, I resolve to stay on it.

On the way back, the trail did nothing funky; it ran pretty much true east-west, and I never did see the divergence that had led me up to the old foundation. What happened, I'm fairly certain, is that bizarre forces altered space for a brief period, intending to deliver me to those unknown parties carrying on furtively near the old remains. However, when said forces realized that, yow, that guy's got a bamboo whacky stick, they thought better of it and put me right back where I belonged.

Smart, those bizarre forces.

It was a good hike. Six out of six caches found. That makes a total of 407, I believe.

A Dark Regions Special

I usually try to avoid a lot of noise and bluster and keep salesmanship fairly low-key around here. However, YOU GOTTA GO GET THIS PACKAGE FROM DARK REGIONS. It's a four-book lot that includes the trade paperback edition of my new collection, Other Gods, along with Proverbs for Monsters by Michael A. Arnzen, Vectors: A Week In The Death of a Planet by Charlee Jacob & Marge Simon, and Songs of Silver by Laura J. Underwood. You get the lot for 40% off, and right now, there's probably not a better deal on the planet, unless you get, like, free gasoline for the rest of your life or something.

I always recommend ordering from Horror Mall, as it's proven to be as speedy and reliable as booksellers come. So go here: Dark Regions 40% Off Sale. That's four books for $39.95 plus shipping. It's very safe to say you'll get more than more your money's worth.



(Read mine first.)

It Ain't Just Bastille Day...

...It's also Mrs Death's birthday. Happy birfday, Mrs Death! (For anyone who isn't aware, Mrs Death is the wife.) She sure is old!



(Okay, I'll be back in a couple of years, after the wounds heal.)

Happiness Is...

1,200 tracks by Akira Ifukube (Godzilla, kith and kin) on your iPod.

A dirty martini with habanero pepper–stuffed olives.

A contract for the script you've labored over for weeks, with payment on the way.

A new short story acceptance.

Enough money to buy gasoline to get to the friggin' office this week.

Well, four out of five ain't bad. Who needs to go to the office anyway?

P.S. Chicago

Oh, yeah. Some things have changed in Chicago. Used to be that if you stopped your car at a stoplight, somebody would come out, clean your windshield, and hope you'd fling a couple of bucks his way. I guess too many of them got run over doing that, because now I've discovered that if you stop walking, some fucker will come up, start cleaning your shoes before you can say "My kingdom for a Hoveround," and demand eight dollars.

Well, no, I didn't run over the guy. I didn't give him eight bucks, either.

RDU to ORD and Back

Chicago is still there, all right. I saw it with my own eyes. Lived there back in the 80s and have visited many times since. In all my days, though, this recent long weekend was the first time I've stayed down in the Loop for several days doing mostly touristy stuff. I gots to say, touristy stuff has its charms.

Thursday morning, Mrs Death and I flew to O'Hare from Raleigh-Durham and met up with our friends, Daryl and Melissa, whom we've known since the absolute darkest of ages (not that I'd know anything about dark ages). Partook of much good food and drink, and went down to Taste of Chicago at Grant Park—initially with plans to see the fireworks. Eventually, though, due to several factors, we opted to return to the hotel. (Turns out this might have been a good thing, as several people got shot at the park.) So we hung out at a really nice little bistro next to the hotel for a while, and after our friends retired, Mrs Death and I went out for some late-night geocaching (found three).

Friday was a good day of sightseeing and partaking of more food and spirits. Hung out at Navy Pier, where the men dressed as ladies, and...oh, wait, wrong tale. Hung out at Navy Pier, where we sought a particular geocache, but to no avail. Walked many miles, made feet sore. Had to drink some more to cool the toes. Friday night, we celebrated Mrs Death's upcoming birthday at a rowdy little piano bar called Howl at the Moon, where Mrs Death bamboozled the piano player by requesting "Sweat Leaf" by Black Sabbath. Since he was so thoroughly bamboozled, he made Peg come up on stage so he might serenade her with a marvelously indecent rendition of Happy Birthday. That Mrs Death.

Spent most of yesterday hunting caches in a forest preserve in Streamwood, one of Chicago's far northwest suburbs. Found five. Got home late this afternoon after—you guessed it—hunting caches between Raleigh and Greensboro. Found 15 or so.

Tomorrow, it's to work on some revisions on the Big One I've been laboring over for the past few weeks.

I leave you with these.


"Emergency! Emergency! Rodan is approaching!"


A beautiful day to arrive in the city.


A wild bunch partaking of Things Wet.


The Bean. There's some weird shit in Chicago anymore.


Like I said.


Caching at the Water Tower.

-30-

Finished the big ol' project I've had my face buried in for several weeks. Turned it in, along with a long synopsis, a short synopsis, the name of my daughter's first boyfriend, and all that accompanying business.

Next comes revision stage. At least there's a little breathing room, and I've got a couple of extra days off for Independence Day. Hoo-wah.

Have a great Fourth.

VMNH Geocaching Day

Although to many it might seem very near invisible, one of Martinsville, VA's most attractive and socio-economically progressive institutions is the Virginia Museum of Natural History. It conducts significant research, hosts some very appealing exhibits (such as dinosaurs, dinosaurs, and dinosaurs!), and also sponsors lots of positive community programs, such as day camps for kids and teens, outings to clean up local streams and rivers, health seminars for seniors, and...an introduction to geocaching!

Bright and early this morning, I headed out to the Gravely Nature Preserve, just outside Martinsville's city limits, where 30-some local folks interested in geocaching came out to learn just what it's all about. I had volunteered to help out, so I tagged along to hinder as best I might a group of up-and-coming cachers on the mile-and-a-half trail. The young lady in charge of the outing, who goes by the handle MuseumWren, did a really nice job of planning the activity and getting folks together to learn about how to use multi-billion dollar military satellites to find Tupperware in the woods. Several of the groups went after the caches that I had set up on the trail a couple of months ago, and I believe each of them managed to make the finds -- even the tricky little micro-container planted in a tree.

I went with several very nice folks who really took to the challenge right from the start. They had originally targeted just one of my hides, but we ended up going to all three, plus a puzzle cache that MuseumWren set up. Unfortunately, one young lad stumbled upon a yellowjacket nest, and he and his dad got stung several times -- but they both shrugged off the stings and went on to make a couple of tricky finds. What troopers!

Best of all, I finally got to meet a local cacher (handle Kuykenew), whom I've known online for several months; and my good friends, the Albaneses, who've become geocachers of dark renown, showed up as well. This was a really nice activity that got a bunch of strangers together for a good time and a wee bit of education.

Tonight, I grilled out chicken for my mom and me. The rest of the day has been devoted to meeting that looming deadline. Hoo boy, it's closing fast.

Grendel? Wampus Cat? Larry Talbot?

After going great guns on the latest writing project for several days, I took a break yesterday and hit the trail to grab a couple of geocaches. I was a pretty fair distance out on the Osprey Trail, near Lake Townsend, just north of Greensboro, when something came barreling through the woods, a couple of hundred feet away. At first, I thought it was a deer—it looked to be about the size of a big buck—but as it leaped over a fallen tree, I saw that it was dark gray and had a long, bushy tail. There were too many trees between it and me to get a real good look at it, and at the speed it was running, it was out of sight in a few seconds.

I don't think it was a dog, and it was way too large to be a fox. Possibly a coyote, as they do come around these parts now and again, but if so, it was sure a big one. Whatever it was, I'm kind of glad it went hauling ass in the other direction, rather than right at me.

The rest of the hike, I kept a sharp eye out, but I never saw nor heard any further sign of it or its kin. It was the one time I've hit the trail without taking my phone along, and for a while there, I rather wished I had it with me.

I did find a couple of nice caches, at least, making for a grand total of 329. I expect I will add several to that tally this coming weekend.

Other Gods, by the way, is now in stock at Horror Mall. Get out there and snag yourself a copy, if you've yet to do that snagging thing.

Dark Deadlines

Nothing like a tight deadline to get the writing process moving fast and hot. Can't say I'm too fond of having to write at such a pace on a regular basis, yet when I do, the prose tends to hit on all cylinders. Little word wastage, and the saved words prove to be mostly the right ones.

Try it sometime, even if there's not money riding on the deal. Might be worth your while.

Porcupine Sex

It's a pity that certain communiques didn't come up prior to the editors' panel at Mo*Con this weekend. (Click the pic for Nick Mamatas's latest journal entry, which is relevant in context...)



Then read the follow-up (where the above might make some sense) here: Porcupine Sex

Mo News Is Good News

Ye Olde Mo*Con III Report...

With the string of snafus getting longer and nastier at the Indianapolis airport yesterday afternoon, I wasn't sure I was going to make it home before growing too old to know where I was. But after a very late departure and a route that turned a 170-mile flight into an over 500-mile flight, I made my connection at Chicago's O'Hare (only just) and arrived back in Greensboro last night, barely an hour later than scheduled. Of course I had heard about the big storms in the midwest, but until I ended up flying over portions of Indiana, Missouri, and Illinois, I had no real conception of how widespread it was. From 35,000 feet, as far as the eye could see, the midwest looked like the world's biggest mud puddle. In places, there was more water than terrain; it looked like an endless, shallow lake with occasional land features protruding. On Friday, just after I arrived, Indianapolis got some further big rain, but it broke later in the day, and the rest of the weekend was beautiful.

Mo*Con III got off to a propitious start: as soon as I checked into the hotel, I set out to find some nearby geocaches — in the pouring rain, of course. Found a couple; then headed over to the Broaddus house, courtesy of Maurice's beautiful and talented young assistant, Lauren (who deserves special credit for going far beyond the call of duty in transporting folks all over creation and making sure Maurice was doing what he oughta be when he oughta be). Met Maurice's lovely wife Sally (also deserving of special credit, particularly for enduring the burdens Maurice drops upon her!) and their energetic kids, plus many of the other guests and nefarious infiltrators, such as her hineyness Alethea Kontis, Kelli "Horror Wench" Dunlap, Nick Mamatas, Chesya Burke, Sara Larson, Michael West, and Kim Paffenroth. Then I left again with Lauren to abduct Matt Cardin upon his arrival at the airport, which we did in short order.

Back to the Broaddus's for an excellent dinner of chicken marsala and fettucine Alfredo, then to the Dwelling Place (Where It All Happened). Then, for one of the weekend's highlights, I led Lauren, the Wench, and Princess Alethea on a geocaching excursion to a nearby graveyard. Found the cache in short order and then headed out to a nearby park to seek another one. It was here that things began to unravel. Turned out there was no direct way to the cache other than to bushwhack through thick foliage, so Kelli and Lauren remained near the very busy road while Alethea and I ventured into the brush. We come upon water...and more water...and more water...and finally, Alethea says she's going to hold up. I go in farther and farther...and suddenly I'm surrounded by deep water on all sides. It's some real flooding we have here! Then I hear Alethea hollering at me that the cops have arrived on the scene. I come out of the woods to hear Lauren telling a couple of officers, "We're from the church! This is a church outing!" Kelli's telling the cops that the guy coming out of the woods will explain. So I tell them all about geocaching; they tell us we probably don't want to be skulking around in the woods and busy road in this area. We all agree it's a good idea, so we head back to The Dwelling Place, and ten to one the cops went out to hunt caches. The band Mother Grove was now hard at it, cranking out some rockin' Celtic sounds, which I enjoyed a lot. Eventually, I headed back to the hotel; no telling what time it was.

Saturday was a day of panels and food. Got to meet my longtime online Viking buddy, Bob Freeman; the beautiful Tracy Jones; redheaded horror firebrand Debbie Kuhn; Doug Warrick, Jason Sizemore, and many of the attending Indiana Horror Writers (forgive me for not having everyone's name in the old mental file cabinet). I was then pleased as all get-out to get to see old friend Gary Braunbeck after too many years, and to meet Lucy Snyder for the first time. Some invigorating panel discussion followed; first on spirituality and writing, with Matt Cardin (moderator), Maurice, Nick, Bob, Kim, Gary, and myself. Then I moderated a panel about editing, which ended up being fairly lively, with Nick, Jason, Chesya, Matt, and Frank Creed. Luncheon followed, consisting of many varieties of chili, some hot and spicy enough to make me smile. Then...geocaching. Snagged a couple (including the one from the waterlogged park, at long last), then returned for the Role of Gender in Horror panel, featuring Lucy, Gary, Chesya, Kelli, and Natalie Crish.

Spent an enjoyable Saturday evening back at Chez Broaddus, with a pizza supper and hangout time in the yard (a.k.a. mosquito heaven) with beaucoup Mo*Conners. Returned to the hotel at a reasonable hour (just after midnight, I believe) and went geocaching.

Sunday Morning opened with a church service at the Dwelling Place, the main feature being Brian Keene's testimony from the first Mo*Con. Very enlightening, moving, and entertaining. The service was often insightful, but it needed a good editor. After lunch, it was a wee bit more geocaching — this time unsuccessful, alas — and then off for the airport debacle. At least I got to spend some additional quality time with Matt and Nick while waiting on our respective flights.

Maurice, you have my admiration for undertaking an event as involved as Mo*Con, for which you receive mainly the intangible benefits of the company you bring in. It's got to be physically taxing as well as emotionally draining, but I hope you're up to it for a long time to come, as I really hope to return — even if I'm just a lowly infiltrator. For me it was a memorable experience — uplifting in every way.

Plus, I worked in some good geocaching and got some of us busted by the cops. How much better could it get?

Don D'Ammassa: "OTHER GODS" Not Entirely Full of Bilgewater

Well, the above can be inferred, given Don D'Ammassa's new review of Other Gods at his Critical Mass Web site. D'Ammassa writes, "Other Gods is a uniformly good collection with a few stories that stand out a little way, although the general quality is so high that you might not notice. The treatment varies from understated to quite explicit...not a bad story in the collection. A must-read for horror fans."

Visit here to get the whole sheboygan: Critical Mass Reviews, 6/8/08.

Then go here and buy the damn book already: Other Gods at Horror Mall

My big ol' outlining job is finished and sent to the appropriate parties, so now we play the waiting game. Haven't put in a stint like that since working on Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark back in '98.

This coming weekend, I'll be one of the troublemakers at Mo*Con III in Indianapolis. If you're in that part of the country, please come round. It's only $10 for the weekend, and there will be all kinds of marginally decadent goings-on for the amusement of attendees. (You didn't hear that from me, though.) Other folks involved include Maurice Broaddus (the brains behind the bash), Chesya Burke, Matt Cardin, Bob Freeman, Nick Mamatas, Kim Paffenroth, Lucy Snyder, and a number of other societal outcasts.

I can even fix you up with a copy of Other Gods, no questions asked.

At some point, I'll be excusing myself from the revelry for a time, as between the hotel and The Dwelling Place, there are at least 20 geocaches waiting to be claimed by a certain transient southerner.

Hot Parking and Grabbing

Yeah, so it didn't occur to me until some time after logging a number of geocaches last night that my phrasing might not have been the world's most prudent. Spent several hours caching in High Point with my friend Cindy, who used to work with me at the office; she goes by "Cute Chick," and I must say it's an apt handle. It was 97 degrees last night, so we worked up a good sweat even though we were in the air-conditioned car half the time (most of the caches were quick finds, known as "Park and Grabs"). So what do I do to log them but post "Went out for a HOT evening of parking and grabbing with Cute Chick." I hope she doesn't lob a brick at me, but there were too many logs to bother changing, and hey, the wording has a nice ring.

This weekend, I'm on a marathon writing session, trying to finish and polish a very important outline before Monday morning. I'm making good progress, but tomorrow's going to be a full day of it. Past the halfway point this evening, so at least that bodes well for the next big session.

Haven't blogged much lately, so I hope someone's still out there reading occasionally. Don't give up; I'm still alive and caching.

Help! Jack Haringa Must Die!

Lots of things happening/coming out all of a sudden. Help, the anthology to benefit Preditors & Editors in the lawsuit against them by PublishAmerica, et. al., which features my story, "Festival of the Jackal" just came out, as did Nick Kaufmann's Jack Haringa Must Die, which compiles a mess of dead Haringa blog entries, including a little booger titled "Woolly Solution," by this guy. The latest issue of Dark Discoveries magazine (#11) just arrived, along with the special Darker Discoveries chapbook, which includes my short-short, "Megan." A new Cemetery Dance with a new Rainey tale ("The Gaki") will soon be running rampant. And my newest collection, Other Gods, just hit the street in trade paperback format (the lettered and numbered hardback should arrive next month).

This past week, most of my time was devoted to working on an outline for a pretty big project I hope to be undertaking during the next month. Can't divulge details at the moment, but I'll post them if and when the light turns green. Assuming I get the job, I'll be mostly in seclusion for the month of June—except for the weekend of the 13th through 15th, when I'll be in Indianapolis for Mo*Con III.

So, that's it in a nutshell. See you on the other side...

CEMETERY DANCE #59 Is Loose

Cemetery Dance #59 is finally on its way, featuring my story, "The Gaki." The issue's cover art looks mighty fun. Good company, too, except for maybe that Vernon chap from Nova Scotia.

Also just received the latest issue of Dark Discoveries, and the chapbook published as a special-offer "extra," which includes my short-short, "Megan." Beautiful little package, this. Alas, I believe the chapbooks are all sold out, but if you're keen on wheeling and dealing, you might be able to dig one up somewhere. You can check out Dark Discoveries here.

And me, I've been stranded on a desert island for the past couple of days. Well, not exactly stranded, and it wasn't really a desert, but it was an island nonetheless. Camped out with a bunch of friends at Deer Island, on Philpott Lake, Virginia, which is one of the most beautiful sites in the state. Hiked, made fire, piloted a Wave Runner (and didn't fall off, unlike some folks I know), ate well, drank beer, found geocaches.

The latter activity involved tackling some of the most physically challenging terrain I've attempted in years—probably since I was a kid, as a matter of fact. The inclines I encountered were very long and damn near vertical. I did sit down quickly a time or two (which is preferable to slipping over a precipice), and fortunately came out only dirty rather than injured. Happily, the caches were unearthed, the logs signed.

Now it's hard to work on this new project, for there is a deadline, and a tight one.

There's Nothing Obsessive-Compulsive About It At All

It’s good to have wacky neighbors. Last night about 10:00 PM, my friend Paul calls up and asks if I want to go geocaching. I say yeah, so we head out to Lake Townsend Trail, which is pretty close by, and we embark on a late-night three-mile hike.

Yeah, it was dark out yonder. Several times we had to bushwhack several hundred feet off the trail to find the caches, so I marked the trail with the GPS before setting out. Good thing I did, or we’d be out there still.

Some potentially exciting news on the writing front. Can’t discuss it just now, but it’s a super project for me if all pans out. That makes a couple of biggies out there waiting in the wings; hopefully, one or the other (or both) will break before I grow really, really old. We shall see.

Addendum: Just got a note from Dark Regions Press that the trade paperback edition of my new collection, Other Gods, is now shipping. The hardback editions will be out in another month or so (they’re printed and bound at a different facility). A smiley for me!

So Now I Can Fit Into My Oldest Jeans...

...without busting them at the seams. (The fact that most of the seams are already busted does not enter into this, thank you very much.) All this recent exercise is at least paying off in a few little dividends.

Did get out to hunt quite a few geocaches these past few days; found several (coming up on my 200th find), and planted a new one tonight.

In the midst of it, I started a new short story for a certain market.

Got out to see Iron Man at the Eden Drive-in last weekend. Right fun, though it started raining for the last few minutes of the film, making it very difficult to see. But it was definitely a good time, and the drive-in cheeseburgers hit the spot.

I have discovered that heavy-duty geocaching brings on a severe cheeseburger craving. I can has one pleez?

Where the Sun Don't Shine

You haven't seen Greensboro, the town where I live, until you've seen it from underground.

Not that there's a lot to see in the pitch darkness beneath the roads, in a concrete-walled tunnel, with four inches of water trickling past your feet, a quarter of a mile from the nearest egress, somewhere beneath Fisher Park. After a time, the five-foot ceiling puts an uncomfortable, semi-permanent bend in your spine. You really, really hope your flashlight doesn't die. You have to keep a wary eye out for rats, snakes, spiders, and other potentially hostile indigenous life forms.

I suspect this is not what a whole heap of local folks do for a good time late at night, but for my friend Paul and I last night, it was a blast. We found the geocache.

I did mention to Paul's wife, Jamie, that our excursion was remarkably similar to a scene in my novel, Balak; I did not, however, tell her that, in the novel, things do not end well for the parties involved. It probably would not have been the right thing to say at the time.

Addendum: A nice royalty check for Blue Devil Island arrived. Mighty good timing, I have to say.

Orpheus With a Heart

Though rife with many of the trappings of the classic horror tale, Kim Paffenroth's novelette, Orpheus and the Pearl (Magus Press, 2008), isn't what I would call "horror" at all. With thematic elements that hearken to Dracula, Frankenstein, and Herbert West: Re-Animator, Orpheus is a haunting tale that offers a few little chills and the occasional shudder, but above all, it's a story with a heart (and no, not just an organ yanked out of somebody's chest cavity).

Set in the early 20th century, Orpheus opens with a scene reminiscent of Jonathan Harker's arrival at Castle Dracula, but here, it's a woman psychiatrist, Catherine McGuire, arriving at the dwelling of Dr. Wollston, a highly regarded physician/research scientist who faces an unusual moral, ethical, and practical problem: his young wife is recently deceased, but he has found a way to revive her to a state that resembles life. While her "soul" remains intact, preserving her body requires extensive measures, and her mind has suffered unexplainable damage by the ordeal of dying and resuscitation. Most significantly, she is prone to fits of extreme rage, with a corresponding amplification of physical strength and appetite. It is this problem that Dr. McGuire has been summoned to address.

Tension begins on page 1 and undulates snakelike behind every scene. Just how does one understand, psychoanalyze, and "cure" someone who is technically dead? Mrs. Wollston is not a mindless zombie, yet her presence inspires the kind of fear one might feel in the presence of a wild animal — an animal that might, at the slightest provocation, rip your throat clean out. As Dr. McGuire interacts more closely with Mrs. Wollston, we, as readers, gain increasing insight into this weird state somewhere between life and death, rendered by Paffenroth in alternating shades of clinical detachment and emotional intensity. The characters drive the story to a moving climax and a resolution that is at once hopeful and bittersweet.

Paffenroth's crafting is mostly masterful, yet all is not quite perfect in this novelette, for the occasional turn of a phrase clunks like a B-flat that should have been an F-major-seventh, and I'm not sure it's due entirely to the style of the telling. One line in particular slammed my reading to a stop and even now, it feels as ugly as scraping my fingers across a cheese grater. It describes "a wide, narrow window," followed by its approximate dimensions. This sentence could have breezed right to the portal's dimensions, leaving out the "wide, narrow" bit, and suffered not a smidgen of harm. Perhaps I nitpick, but this stood out sufficiently to make me remember it long after the fact. Thankfully, such gaffes are few in number, and none other so grievous, and when Paffenroth's prose is elegant, it is the very definition.

I'm going to recommend Orpheus for a Stoker as well as to you folks who are dying for a story that is both tense and touching. In my fairly long experience of reading dark fiction, I've too often found the latter quality deficient. Orpheus makes up for a mess of it.

Shorter of Breath and One Day Closer to Death

Friday was my 49th birthday, but I'm actually breathing pretty well (I seem to have successfully stopped smoking, but for a handful of cigarettes here and there since January). Since Friday, I've barely spent a moment indoors, having gone out and about on numerous caching expeditions (both finding and planting); trekked up to the old homeplace in Martinsville; spent an evening around a campfire in the woods; hiked a few miles just for the helluvit; and hung out with my brother, my wife, and old friends. The old bones are a little achy from the exertions, but a bit more hiking this afternoon followed by an evening martini will almost certainly fix it.

I received tons of happy birthday wishes, for which I'm grateful, and I'm slowly but surely sending out little thank-you notes. Hopefully I won't miss anyone, but if I do and you drop by here... mini tanks. It means a lot when people take even a few moments to acknowledge one of these little landmarks.

As for the one day closer to death thing...well, guess it kind of goes with the territory of living.

Today is my brother's birthday, so I guess I'll celebrate a bit more and maybe pilfer one of his gifts, just because it's a personal tradition.

FTF! TN, LN, SL. TFTC!*

Damn. I'm bone tired from the past few weeks of regular physical exertion. Last year at this time, when I was this tired, it was usually from being stressed out.

No, this is a great kind of tired. I've been hiking from two to six miles a day, gone crawling under low footbridges, scaled forty-foot piles of boulders, been out on a forest trail in the middle of the night following tiny reflectors in my flashlight beam for miles on end, waded through plantations of poison ivy, tangled with forests of briers that left me lacerated and bloody, picked my way through deadfalls deeper and darker than Stephen King could imagine, encountered copperheads and black widows, and stumbled about in the dark trying to figure out how to get back to my car because I didn't enter a freaking waypoint.

So far, I've got 134 geocaches to my credit, and that's small potatoes. Most of the folks I've gotten to know in this sport have thousands.

The icons on the map of Greensboro are caches. The smiley ones are those I've found; the stars are the ones I own. Of course, I have quite a few beyond the boundaries of the map in the picture. And I've barely scratched the surface.

I haven't been this worn out or satisfied in years. And the creative batteries are getting a really good recharging.

(Click the image for a larger view.)



*First to find! Took nothing, left nothing, signed log. Thanks for the cache!

Winter Frights

I announced while back that David Montoya had accepted my story, "Sarcophagus," for Magus Press's Winter Frights anthology, but he has just announced the complete lineup. Here it is:

"Scraper" by Michael A. Arnzen
"They Know" by Kealan Patrick Burke
"Goners" by Eric Christ
"I'm Dreaming Of..." by James S. Dorr
"Feral" by JG Faherty
"In Heavenly Peace" by Darren O. Godfrey
"Diseaseater" by Michael McBride
"The Little Church of Safe Crossing" by Joe McKinney
"Chillers" by Lisa Morton
"Miriam" by Kim Paffenroth
"Sarcophagus" by Stephen Mark Rainey
"The Illusion" by Bev Vincent

Some good company here. You may check out David Montoya's "Magus Press Diary" here.

Catching Up

There's no time like your wife being in surgery to catch up on some reading.

No, nothing real major this time. Peg's eyelids were drooping to the point they were cutting off her peripheral vision, so they did a trim job. She's recovering nicely.

I have gotten hopelessly behind in my reading this year. I've spared way too little time for it, and my eyes have gotten so worn out from the intensive computer work I do at my office job (not to mention my writing) that even when I have time, I can't read very long without going cross-eyed.

But while sitting in the waiting room, I took a few books with me, and number one on the list was Beth Massie's Brazen Bull — which has been sitting on the top of the stack for way too long.

This is a nicely produced little chapbook from White Noise Press, with illustrations by Keith Minnion. And if you've ever visited Beth Massie's home, you'll know immediately where the cover art came from.

Ms. Massie's characters are people we know. No; actually, they're just us — normal people living lives with ups and downs, the latter of which have overtaken the people in Brazen Bull to the point that they are close to falling apart. Down the street, an odd set of neighbors has moved in, and from our family's "reasonable" perspective, they seem rather sinister.

The story unfolds through the eyes of Dorrie, a teenage girl with a good heart but a perspective skewed by the darker thoughts of her troubled father. He's not one of those ubiquitous terrible men that often populate horror tales; the dark thoughts that run through his head are thoughts any of us might have if suffering his circumstances. Some are born of prejudice, some are born of desperation. Massie brings everything down to a personal level, putting us, as readers, right smack in the middle of the family's plight, and it makes us damned uncomfortable.

The resolution left me feeling a little hurt inside. Not due to any shortcoming but due to my caring enough about the characters to hope for them. But no, this is a Beth Massie story. She's going to take you into the darkness and make you feel it. And if you know her work, you know this going in.

Brazen Bull is very short, and it feels as if it ought to be bigger, or a part of something bigger. That's not a bad thing — just a result of the tale drawing me in so thoroughly and kicking me around a bit.

I'm not sure whether copies of the chapbook are still available, but it's a nice little package. If you can find one, grab it.

Cache In, Trash Out

Yesterday morning, I headed out to the Peninsula Trailhead, not far up the road, and joined with about 30 other geocachers for a cache-in, trash-out event. This was a pretty major cleanup of an area that had become nothing less than a trash dump over the years. The city donated a dumpster for use (see above), and at the end of the event, it was filled to capacity. I found what must have been someone's idea of a cache 50 years ago: a stash of bottles buried beneath a network of tree roots, a couple of which wer