Preorder Fugue Devil Resurgence today! Available May 1 in ebook, paperback, and signed/numbered hardcover:

Fugue Devil: Resurgence at Black Raven Books

Spring Springs on Good Friday

Early this past week, I finished up my latest Ameri-Scares novel, Georgia: The Haunting of Tate's Mill, and it’s currently getting the editorial once-over. Next step is plotting my not-for-little-people novel tentatively titled Ca' Dolore, which is set in Italy. There will be monsters, murders, and mayhem. And yes, of course, there will be updates as things happen along the way.

Ahhhh, but what an evening. As per the norm, earlier in the day, I ventured forth to Pleasant Hill — happily, picking up a geocache en route. Once here, I visited the local market to acquire vittles and other staples; feasted on some very lovely dead bird; and then set out on a moderate hike to perform maintenance on one of my caches, out on the Dick & Willie Trail (yes, yes, I know). Then I settled myself on the porch to further plot the novel. I made some progress, which pleased me. But the truest pleasure at the time was the serenity of being at the old homeplace, on a truly beautiful evening, with thrushes, mourning doves, and barred owls singing their way into the twilight; bumblebees buzzing around the azaleas; and a couple of bunnies scampering about in the yard. Scarcely a hint of human racket for the better part of two hours (apart from one useless jackass blasting hip-hop from here to the coast). To accentuate the mellow, I made a couple of lovely martinis and a platter of blackened scallops for dinner.

Following, I spent a pleasant hour or so on the Lovecraft eZine Patreon Podcast gathering, which usually happens on Thursday nights, but this week's was moved to tonight. I don't think it'll become a regular Friday thing, but tonight, it was certainly convenient.

This just in: the signed/numbered edition of Fugue Devil: Resurgence is now available for pre-order — here.

Now Playing: Running Home to Shadows!

It’s here: Running Home to the Shadows, from editor Jim Beard and publisher Becky Books. This volume, which features plenty of recollections about Dark Shadows from a host of writing professionals — including yours truly — plus a foreword by Dark Shadows’ own Kathryn L Scott (Maggie Evans, Josette DuPres, Rachel Drummond, and others).

From the editor: 

School is out, and Barnabas is IN!

They were a generation all their own, the army of children who ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows, TV’s very first supernatural soap. A breed apart, they set aside the worship of mundane pop stars to follow vampires, witches, and werewolves. From 1966 to 1971, they were daytime Monster Kids… and today they have stories to tell.

Writer-editor Jim Beard has gathered these grown-up kids together in this tome to tell those tales. Their experiences are sometimes tragic and terrifying, yet also uplifting and inspirational, but above all, Dark Shadows touched them so deeply as to leave an indelible impression on their lives that lasts to this day.

Return to Collinwood to brave the stormy nights and rainswept days of yore to listen to this coven of writers spin yarns of childhood encounters with Barnabas, Angelique, Quentin, Vicky, Maggie, and their compatriots. Cross the threshold of the Old House, take a seat by the crackling fire, and make yourself comfortable to the strains of maudlin music issuing forth from the gramophone — the ghosts of the past are about to arise in Running Home to Shadows. Won’t you join us?

Edited by Jim Beard with Charles R. Rutledge

Cover illustration by Mark Maddox with logo design and formatting by Maggie Ryel

Foreword by Kathryn Leigh Scott

Featuring essays by Greg Cox, Kathleen O’Shea David, Mark Dawidziak, Dave Dykema, Bob Freeman, Ed Gross, Nancy Holder, Tina Hunt, Katherine Kerestman, Mark Maddox (with Ed Catto), Elizabeth Massie, Kimberly Oswald, Martin Powell, Dana Pride, Stephen Mark Rainey, Michael Rogers, Charles R. Rutledge, Chris Ryan, Frank Schildiner, Duane Spurlock, and Jeff Thompson

Afterword by Rich Handley

Order Running Home to the Shadows here.

Anthony Horowitz’s Forever and a Day

I grew up reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, and even the least of them — The Man with the Golden Gun, I’d say — still retained a crucial bit of 007 magic. The myriad reboots of the literary Bond — all of varying quality, few of them very satisfying — boggle the mind, so I recently decided to try the relatively recent entries that ostensibly follow the Fleming canon. Having been disappointed by William Boyd’s Solo and Sebastian Faulks’s Devil May Care, I approached Horowitz’s Forever and a Day with some trepidation. Happily, however, as soon as I started reading, I felt a real connection with Fleming’s character and atmosphere. As the novel progressed, the portrayals of the primary villains and our requisite female character, Sixtine, felt well-drawn and engaging. Plot-wise, Forever and a Day is several steps above Solo and Devil May Care; it still seems to lose its way — or feel too derivative — on a few occasions, but for the most part, it hits the right notes. If nothing else, this one left me with a sense of enjoyment rather than disappointment, and I will definitely give Horowitz’s Trigger Mortis a look-see.

Black Raven Books Presents FUGUE DEVIL: RESURGENCE!

If you know about the Fugue Devil, it knows about you. If you see the Fugue Devil, it will come for you.

Many decades ago, summoned by the power of music, The Fugue Devil   — a dreadful, malevolent entity from another place — entered our world. Every seventeen years, it reappears to satiate its hunger for unsuspecting souls.

Author Stephen Mark Rainey’s terrifying novelette, “Fugue Devil,” originally appeared in his first fiction collection, Fugue Devil & Other Weird Horrors in 1992. Now, thiry years later, Black Raven Books brings you Fugue Devil: Resurgence, which features the original novelette; its sequel, “The Devil’s Eye”; and ten more tales of horror and mind-bending terror.

This incredible volume includes stories originally presented by such superlative publishers as Borderlands Press, Dark Regions, and others, as well as several new stories appearing in print for the first time. Available in ebook, paperback, and signed/limited edition hardback. Release date is May 1, 2022.

Order the Kindle and/or paperback edition here:
   Fugue Devil: Resurgence at Amazon.com

Order the hardback edition here:
Fugue Devil: Resurgence, signed/numbered hardback

Fugue Devil: Resurgence at Kendall Reviews

Bad George and Other Blasts From the Past

A busy week it was. Hardly unexpectedly, I received a call from my former boss, asking if I would care to put in a few hours per month freelancing, since, without me, they're pretty much up to their ears in alligators. It's actually a welcome opportunity to keep doing a job I know and enjoy. Plus there's the extra bucks, which can't hurt. I also made considerable progress on Georgia: The Haunting of Tate's Mill. I can see the light at the end of this one.

A few new, local geocaches came out this past week, so I put in a couple of rigorous cache hunts — one in the dumping rain that so waterlogged me that I still have water in my shoes. Friend Old Rob and I shared in the first-to-find, so that made us both smile real big.

In Martinsville over the weekend, I discovered a couple of folders that contained scads of school papers and artwork by both my brother and me, which my mom had saved. I had no idea these existed. Some went back as far as kindergarten. The image you see upstairs there is a pen & ink rendering of my great-uncle Herbert's place in Gainesville, GA, which I drew sometime in the 1980s. My aunt Dot made it into the cover of a greeting card. Perhaps my favorite discovery among these treasures was an unfinished class drawing from second grade. Written on it was the following exchange between my teacher, Ms. Jackson, and me:

Mark: "Sorry I did not get throu. Goarge botherd me."

Ms. Jackson: "Please try to finish your work in the morning. You do not need to talk to George."

I remember George well. I haven't seen him since early in elementary school, but I did find him online. He is apparently an attorney over in Winston-Salem.

Many of my old drawings were plenty violent, with Indian massacres, knights battling on castle towers, dinosaurs and other monsters chowing down on innocent passersby. Some were a bit nicer. There were drawings of my family traveling in an airplane; a pretty decent rendering of my dog, Patty; and a number of reasonably well-rendered space rockets. Below is a drawing I made in third grade, which I thought was actually pretty cool.

On Saturday, I rode up to Rocky Mount to hunt a few caches. It was pretty chilly and very windy for most of the time I was out and about. The couple of hides I found at the Franklin County Parks & Recreation Center on Sontag Road proved simple enough. But at Waid Park, I turned a medium difficulty hike into a rugged and fairly risky venture by doing what I tend to do best: plow straight ahead from point A to point B, damning the torpedoes in the process. I ended up skirting a lengthy portion of the Pigg River, the banks of which were steep and treacherous, and from which a bad step would have had disastrous consequences. Fortunately, I managed to maintain my footing. Once past that little obstacle, I found myself negotiating some hairy inclines and dense, difficult woods. But again, I prevailed, and, soon enough, had the cache in hand. As one might surmise, I felt the effects of this little outing pretty severely a little later. However, once back at home, a fine dinner and some wine with Ms. B. made for a comfortable, relaxing evening.

This morning, friend Natalie (a.k.a. Fishdownthestairs) and I headed down to Siler City, where we knocked out a few entertaining caches we both still needed.

Ms. B. and I are currently working our way through Twin Peaks again, from start to finish. The craving was upon both of us, and it's been quite the treat, since I haven't watched it with her for about a decade. And she'd never seen the third season (The Return), which we just started this evening. She's not the devoted David Lynch fan that I am, but she's been enjoying it so far.

For the coming week, I'm hoping to reach the end of Georgia: The Haunting of Tate's Mill. I'm definitely ready to get this one out to the publisher and into the hands of readers.

All righty then. Get on with you. Peace out.

My first-grade rendering of a United DC-8, circa 1966

Cowboys and Indians having a bad time of it, from my kindergarten days

Fire at Camelot! One of my third-grade drawings

Little Mountain Falls, Cane Creek Mountain, and More

I don't think my knees — and possibly the rest of me — have been this worn out for a while. At least not since I went up Grassy Hill Ridge in Rocky Mount, VA, for a geocache several weeks ago (“Oh, My Achin Feetz,” Feb. 21, 2022). On Friday, I departed Greensboro early in the day, bound for Fairy Stone Park, VA, where a couple of newish caches — one traditional (“A Bench with a View #4” GC9PFKB) and one EarthCache (“Little Mountain Falls” GC9EDWH) — lay in wait for me. The steep and sometimes rugged terrain at Fairy Stone has many times both done me a world of good and damn near done me in. The hike on Friday afternoon was far from the longest I’ve undertaken there, but the elevation changes along the way presented both my legs and my lungs with a healthy challenge. There’s a plenty of up and down both ways, but for the most part, the outbound journey was primarily downhill, leaving the rigorous uphill trek for the return. The scenery in this particular corner of the world is gorgeous, even between seasons as we are. Give it a couple of weeks, and these woods will be as green and lush as a rain forest. In autumn, the colors, as I can testify from considerable experience, are stunning. Little Mountain Falls isn’t especially huge, but the stream trickles down numerous tiers from a significant height — considerably higher than the photograph on the left can capture.

Happily, I found the caches I sought and lived to hike another day. Indeed, I was soon back at it, this time on a regular Sunday geocaching outing with a pair of old farts (friends Diefenbaker, a.k.a. Scott, and Old Rob, a.k.a. Old Rob) at the Cane Creek Mountain Preserve in Alamance County. The hike here, while quite pleasant, was not as strenuous as the one at Fairy Stone. Mind you, it could have been, had we dragged Robert up the mountain to find a number of caches he had not yet claimed. However, since Scott and I both had already found those, Rob declined, ostensibly to save us from undertaking a rugged hike for caches we had already found. When it comes down to it, I’m reasonably certain Old Rob simply didn’t cotton to the idea of having cardiac arrest until he had found all the other caches we had targeted for this trip. At Cane Creek, we found one cache relatively quickly, while the other required an inordinate amount of time searching due to mercilessly bouncing coordinates. In the end, though... happily... we prevailed.

Once done at Cane Creek, we zipped over to the nearby community of Swepsonville, where a relatively short trek on the trail took us to another newish cache. Here, our quarry was easily found and required no hairy terrain stunts to reach. However, I kind of wanted to undertake a hairy terrain stunt, and since the the opportunity was there, with Mr. Scott’s assistance, I availed myself to it (see the photo at right). And then, on to nearby Mebane we went, where we found a couple of more relatively easy hides and then busted the hell out of some lunch at the excellent Catrina's Mexican Restaurant, which Ms. B. had recommended following a visit during one of her artsy-fartsy-craftsy retreats in that area. Ms. B. done good with her recommendation.

Next week... believe it or not, I foresee more hiking and caching. Until then, this is your host, Damned Rodan, saying—

Three Old Farts — Old Rodan, Old Rob, Old Diefenbaker — at the Haw River in Swepsonville

Recalling The Monster Times

After posting yesterday about actor Akira Takarada’s passing, I ended up browsing the internets for all kinds of old Toho monster stuff online. One thing led to another, and I discovered (or actually rediscovered, since I had happened upon it some time back) a site that features full issues, by way of JPGs, of The Monster Times, a tabloid-style publication that ran for several years in the 1970s. My first published work, for which I was actually paid — a filmbook of Godzilla vs. the Thing — appeared in issue #42 of TMT (July 1975). I remember discovering TMT at a bookstore in Atlanta when I was a young teen and being blown away that such a publication existed. It was printed on cheap newsprint, featured tons of articles and photos from my favorite monster movies (especially Godzilla and other daikaiju flicks), and leaned distinctly toward humor. Not necessarily good humor, but humor nonetheless. Eventually, issues of TMT began appearing at our local newsstand in Martinsville, VA, which delighted me no end.

I remember picking up an issue one day — Fall of 1973, when I was 14 — and going utterly mad to find the familiar poster art of one of my favorite Godzilla movies, Destroy All Monsters (which, by the way, remains a favorite to this day). Not only that, the filmbook’s author was Tom Murdock, a pen pal I had met sometime earlier by way of the late Greg Shoemaker’s wonderful Japanese Fantasy Film Journal. I asked Tom how he’d gotten published in The Monster Times, and he said he basically asked them if they wanted a filmbook of Destroy All Monsters. They said yes, so he wrote it and sent it to them. They published it and sent him money. So, I immediately wrote The Monster Times and asked them if they wanted a filmbook of Godzilla vs. the Thing. They said yes, so I wrote it and sent it to them. They published it and sent me money (though not all that quickly or without prompting; some things never change).

In the typical way of the publishing business, it took some time between submission, acceptance, and publication. I wrote the Godzilla vs. the Thing filmbook when I was 14 going on 15. I was 16 before the issue came out. Regardless, seeing it on newsstand shelves was, at that time, so exciting that it’s something of a miracle that my teenage body didn’t shake itself apart. During that waiting period—in 1974—I had entered the publishing arena myself with the first issue of Japanese Giants, a cobbled-together fanzine that also featured a Destroy All Monsters filmbook (also by your humble narrator). I only published that one issue, but JG managed to continue for over two more decades, first by way of editor/publisher Brad Boyle and then at the hands of longtime friends Ed Godziszewki and Bill Gudmundson.

The Monster Times closed up shop in 1976, with issue #48, so it was well for me that my filmbook saw print before the publication’s time ran out. At one time, I had a sizable collection of TMT issues, but that newsprint tended to not weather the years very well, especially since I didn’t have the forethought to protect them adequately. Still, I have these two issues, and several others — mostly featuring Godzilla — and it would be kind of nice, I suppose, if they managed to outlast me.

The Monster Times #26 (featuring Destroy All Monsters) at From Zombo's Closet

The Monster Times #42 (featuring Godzilla vs. the Thing) at From Zombo’s Closet

R.I.P. Akira Takarada 1934–2022

I was saddened to learn that actor Akira Takarada has passed away. He starred in numerous classic Toho films, from the original Godzilla to Godzilla: Final Wars, and dozens of others in between. Takarada-san was active at fan conventions for many years; I’m sorry I never had a chance to meet him in person. Sadly, there aren’t many of the most notable cast and crew members remaining from the days of Toho’s early classics. A wonderful talent he was, and by all accounts, a true gentleman. 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gone on a bit of a daikaiju binge, including several that starred Takarada-san. I expect I’ll be putting on a bunch more in the coming days.

Coming Soon: Death’s Garden Revisited

Another upcoming book release featuring an article of mine is Death’s Garden Revisited, a collection of essays about particularly intriguing graveyards and cemeteries. My experience, perhaps not altogether unexpectedly, involves geocaching. Hunting caches has taken me to innumerable boneyards over the years, and many of my favorites have been in or around graveyards — especially very old ones, such as the Patrick-Watson graveyard, not far from my place in Guilford County, NC. I posted a little about it (among other happenings) in 2019 (“Anyone for Scorpion?” June 15, 2019)

Some years back, editor Loren Rhoads assembled a collection of essays for her original book, titled Death’s Garden, and it has clearly warranted a second volume.

The Kickstarter campaign for this one has just kicked off: Death’s Garden Revisited Kickstarter

Coming Soon: Running Home to Shadows

On the heels of Bob Issel's Our Shadowed Past — a huge volume of essays from fans and the stars of legendary soap Dark Shadows (in which I had a hand in the production) — comes Running Home to Shadows, from Jim Beard and Becky Books. I also have a new essay in this volume, which features plenty of recollections about Dark Shadows from a host of writing professionals — plus a foreword by Dark Shadows's own Kathryn Leigh Scott.

From the editor: 

School is out, and Barnabas is IN!

They were a generation all their own, the army of children who ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows, TV’s very first supernatural soap. A breed apart, they set aside the worship of mundane pop stars to follow vampires, witches, and werewolves. From 1966 to 1971, they were daytime Monster Kids… and today they have stories to tell.

Writer-editor Jim Beard has gathered these grown-up kids together in this tome to tell those tales. Their experiences are sometimes tragic and terrifying, yet also uplifting and inspirational, but above all, Dark Shadows touched them so deeply as to leave an indelible impression on their lives that lasts to this day.

Return to Collinwood to brave the stormy nights and rainswept days of yore to listen to this coven of writers spin yarns of childhood encounters with Barnabas, Angelique, Quentin, Vicky, Maggie, and their compatriots. Cross the threshold of the Old House, take a seat by the crackling fire, and make yourself comfortable to the strains of maudlin music issuing forth from the gramophone — the ghosts of the past are about to arise in Running Home to Shadows. Won’t you join us?

Edited by Jim Beard with Charles R. Rutledge

Cover illustration by Mark Maddox with logo design and formatting by Maggie Ryel

Foreword by Kathryn Leigh Scott

Featuring essays by Greg Cox, Kathleen O’Shea David, Mark Dawidziak, Dave Dykema, Bob Freeman, Ed Gross, Nancy Holder, Tina Hunt, Katherine Kerestman, Mark Maddox (with Ed Catto), Elizabeth Massie, Kimberly Oswald, Martin Powell, Dana Pride, Stephen Mark Rainey, Michael Rogers, Charles R. Rutledge, Chris Ryan, Frank Schildiner, Duane Spurlock, and Jeff Thompson

Afterword by Rich Handley

Stay tuned for release news and ordering information.

Sabbatical

It was something of a whim. The other day, I was working on a chapter of my upcoming Ameri-Scares series novel — Georgia: The Haunting of Tate's Mill — which is set in Gainesville, GA, my mom's hometown. I spent much of my youth visiting my grandparents here, particularly at Christmastime. The novel is set at nearby Lake Sidney Lanier, and at one point, I began thinking, "I'd sure like to eyeball some of these places I'm describing in person rather than on Google." Well, I'm retired from the day job now, and as I didn't have any crucial plans at home for this week, I decided to drive down, stay for a few days, and get all the info I needed. Plus... perhaps most importantly... I still have plenty of geocaches here to hunt.

Monday, February 28, 2022: Departures and Arrivals

At about 9:30 a.m., I hit the road, only to be halted immediately by an accident on US 29 South that blocked the highway. Fortunately, I was able to exit and detour around it before the road became impassable. And once underway, travel proceeded generally smoothly, which has so often not been the case on trips involving Interstate 85 South. I grabbed a handful of caches along the way and arrived in Gainesville at 3:00 p.m. sharp, which was fortuitous since that was check-in time at my hotel.

Once settled in, I headed over to my grandparents' old place, just to give it a look. As I was taking a few photos, a young lady came from within to check me out, so I told her about having spent much of my youth in that house. Rather to my surprise, she knew a lot about my family, since she had become friends with the neighbor across the street (sadly, now deceased), who was among my grandparents' best friends. The young lady was kind enough to let me come in and see the place, for which I was incredibly grateful, and we chatted about old times there for quite a while. We exchanged contact information, and I sent her some family photos I had on Google, particularly those that were taken in Gainesville. With all that's changed over the years here — so much of it, to my mind, undesirable — I found it most gratifying that this little corner of the past has been preserved to the degree that it is. After this visit, I went down to Ivey Terrace Park, very near my grandparents' old place, where my brother and I frequently played as kids. I found a couple of caches. Yes, I did. Then I returned to the hotel to freshen up a bit.

For dinner, I wandered up to Southern Recess Gastro Pub, which Brugger and I had enjoyed on our trips here in 2012 ("Let's Do the Time Warp Again") and 2013 ("Chicken City"). The restaurant was crowded, but I was able to procure a seat outside (which was perfect, since it's tradition, and the indoors is really noisy). I went for a dirty gin martini and fish & chips. The martini was perfect, the fish & chips very good. To date, my favorite fish & chips have been found at The Celtic Fringe, in Reidsville, NC, and The Spotted Dog, in Carrboro, NC; Southern Recess makes them mighty fine, to be sure, but I don't think they're quite up to my favorites.

Footbridge over Jesse Jewell Parkway. Last time here, I found a cache there;
it's now closed for construction at either end.

A remnant of the picturesque past: the Hall County courthouse in downtown Gainesville

Dinner destination: Southern Recess Gastro Pub on Bradford Street

Martini plus fish & chips equals all kinds of happy

After dinner, on my walk back to the hotel, I stopped at a nearby parking garage to hunt a cache — "Jury Duty" (GCGKYT) — which I had sought on an earlier trip, but without success. This time, I found the little monster. I love the fact that, after all these years, the cache is still in place and in decent condition. With a fine dinner and excellent drink under my belt, not to mention having claimed a difficult cache, I count the evening as most pleasing.

View from the parking garage while hunting "Jury Duty"

A lovely night in Gainesville, viewed from on high

Tuesday, March 1, 2022: Good Eats, Achy Feetz

Cache log with my signature—and the sigs
of some fellow cachers from back home.

Apparently, I was exhausted after the previous day's rigors, for I enjoyed a nine-hour, unbroken night's sleep, which virtually never happens these days. Upon waking, I made myself a couple of barrels of coffee, took a shower, and ventured out into the ungodly traffic nightmare that Gainesville has become. Judas F'ing Priest, what a change from the days when I knew Gainesville best. From the time I was very small, through my college days, and for some years beyond, Gainesville was a serene, picturesque town with a fantastic, if relaxed, quality of life; it's now bustling insanity, with traffic gridlock day in and day out, and scarcely a square foot of land that hasn't been overdeveloped. To be fair, a reasonable sampling of the town's innate loveliness remains, yet getting to it has become an experiment in how much burgeoning humanity a sane person's patience can stand. My god... how anyone can live in such a monstrous maze of endless gridlock is beyond me. I know that this is very subjective, but I grieve, deeply, for the loss of the singular, uplifting character that once defined this town. It's now a bedroom community of Atlanta, with a handful of the amenities but all of the nightmares of overcrowded urbania. It sickens me.

Now that I've ranted about the seven hells of overpopulation, let's get back to some happier doings. After my morning's refurbishment, out I went among the natives to the nearest Publix and picked up a few staples — mainly coffee and coffee accouterments, which the hotel doesn't provide, at least in any sufficiency, plus lunch things, so I don't have to eat out every meal. Then... I grabbed a few geocaches, some way out Thompson Bridge Road, some close in to town. Yes, I did this thing. It was neat as can be to find, on a few of the cache logs, the signatures of some good friends and fellow geocachers from back home.

Before packing it in for the afternoon, I revisited Ivey Terrace Park and my grandparents' old place, where I scattered some of Phred's ashes. I know he desired this.

The little springhouse at Ivey Terrace Park. It's been there since my mom was a kid, and my brother
and I both played here when we were little. I scattered some of his ashes around it.

Back at the hotel, I cobbled together lunch from the goodies I'd picked up at the store. Then I paid a visit to my cousin, Mark Bell (Jr.), whom I haven't seen in many years. He and my mom were near in age and regularly kept in touch until Mom's health precluded it. It was a wonderful, revitalizing time for me — a reminder of the days when I had a relatively large, close extended family. That is, sadly, a time now gone.

A wonderful jalapeno margarita at
Tino's Mexican Restaurant

I did a little more geocaching before returning to the hotel for a bit of recuperation (the caching has been rigorous, I can tell you). For dinner, I opted to try Tino's Tex-Mex Restaurant, right here at the hotel, and it was a fine choice. I had fantastic beef brisket tacos and a right large jalapeno margarita. As it is with most Mexican restaurants, there wasn't much tequila in the drink, but that was actually fine by me, for I had plenty of high-octane drink waiting for me in my hotel room. However... before returning, I went out on what turned out to be a long (roughly three-mile) walk after the stages of an Adventure Lab cache. This proved both exhilarating and bloody frustrating. I found all but one of the stages, but that one...whew! I couldn't find it tonight, and I don't know whether I'll be able to tomorrow. We shall see, we shall. But I did see some cool sights, including what has to be Gainesville's most haunted house. I feel like I might have even brought a horrible ghost back with me, just from walking by it. I gotta say... I love it!

And then... exhaustion set in. G'night and G'bless.

Exceptional brisket tacos at Tino's Tex-Mex Restaurant in Gainesville

Do not tell me this place is not haunted. It is haunted.

"Love Freedom," a massive mural at one of the geocache stages I visited this evening

Wednesday, March 2, 2022: The Haunted Lake

If, some years ago, I hadn't read online about the legends of "haunted" Lake Sidney Lanier, I'd have never suspected the lake had such a reputation. I spent a lot of time at Lake Lanier in my youth and knew quite a few people in the vicinity; the subject of ghostly happenings out there never came up. Lake Lanier is a massive recreation area, and I suspect the majority of folks who use it aren't really aware of its dark reputation. No matter, for in Georgia: The Haunting of Tate's Mill, there will be ghostly events aplenty, and if the characters didn't know about the possibility of such otherworldly shenanigans from the start... well... that's on them.

The first thing I did this morning — after coffee and a breakfast bar — was head out Cleveland Highway to the site of Old Bell's Mill, which was quite well known in its day (I wrote a bit about Bell's Mill and how it relates to my Ameri-Scares novel here). Here, I didn't hunt geocaches, but I scoped out the precise area that I have fictionalized for the book and took a bunch of photos. This will come in handy in fine-tuning my descriptions of the setting, which I do try to paint as accurately as possible. The whole point of the books is to capture at least a modicum of local color, and I'm glad to have been able to spend quality time at three of the five locations in my series novels.

The site of Old Bell's Mill... as near as one can get to it

Afterward, I did go geocache hunting, of course. I finished up a couple of Adventure Lab caches I had begun last night, hunted their associated bonus caches, and went after a bunch of hides on Gainesville’s north and east sides — some woodland hides that required negotiating moderate to tough terrain, and some typical urban hides that required stopping the car, jumping out, and signing the cache log. I broke for lunch — a chicken salad sandwich, from the supplies I bought yesterday — and then, after logging my morning's finds, headed right back out. This afternoon, I headed south and west, out Dawsonville Highway, and found another bunch, mostly urban park & grabs. The only trail hide, near Gainesville High School, I was unable to find. I sort of suspect it's missing... or I may just have missed it. One's as likely as the other, I suppose. Being out and about and fighting the fucking Gainesville traffic just about sent me over the edge — again. Far as I'm concerned, there's just no excuse for this much goddamn humanity in a small town.

Tonight, I discovered dinner at 37 Main, a bar with fair character and lots of specials. I went early to beat the crowd (tonight is "Trivia Wednesday"), but — little did I know — it was happy hour, where everything is half price. So, I ended up with excellent chicken wings and a very fine gin martini for $10 (of course, I tipped very well, as the service was great). I've been doing my best to keep costs very low on this trip, and this bit of good luck helped quite a bit.

Tomorrow, I anticipate hitting the road as soon as I'm up and packed — after rush hour, inasmuch as rush hour actually lets up here.

This ruination of a beautiful small town by too many motherfucking people is the one thing that hurts me to my soul. All my life, I loved this town, its character, its superb quality of living — which didn't involve fighting big-city congestion in a place that was never, ever in a million years designed for this kind of population explosion. There was a time I actually considered living here. I couldn't do it now. It would literally kill me. And that really hurts.

Otherwise... I made for myself an excellent time here, and in some ways, I'm sorry I can't spend more time here. I did find several little slices of the best of life that Gainesville offered long ago. I sure hope it can hang onto those. I suspect it won't be long, though, before they are razed, and all we see is more people, more scars upon the land. Never have John Denver's lyrics hit so close to home.

Peace out.

37 Main from my table vantage point

The old football field behind Gainesville Civic Center. When I was a kid, my grandfather brought
me to many Gainesville High School football games here.

Hot, Cold, Hot, Cold, Hot....

The sad conflict in Ukraine, and its potential global ramifications, has overshadowed almost everything this weekend. Here, just as COVID-19, at least as it currently stands, has finally become less a complication in our daily lives, here comes the Amazing Pootin to throw a monkey wrench into the worldworks. Today, we hear Pootin has upped the ante with his nuclear deterrent force. Just what we need to escalate a volatile situation.

In this little corner of the world, Ms. B. and I are doing our best to get through each day with as much positive energy as we can generate, for ourselves and our sphere of influence, such as it is.

My second week of retirement was not quite as relaxing as the first. Things pile up, things fall apart. Such is the way of things. Mostly, I've been spending my regular day job hours writing. Progress has been pretty good; I've certainly been more productive than over the past year, certainly within comparable time periods.

Friday, I took my usual trip to Martinsville, fit in quite a bit of work, and entertained myself with Godzilla vs. Gigan, which is far from my favorite daikaiju flick, but it sure enough features some fun monster scenes. Saturday, I hiked a ways on the Dick & Willie Trail to do maintenance one of my old geocaches. It netted me a couple of miles on the trail. Once back in Greensboro, more writing, and Ms. B. and I continued our Game of Thrones binge. Today, it was cold and wet, but that didn't stop friend Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker) and me from going after several new caches in town. We got first-to-find on two of them (after I DNF'd one earlier this morning on a quick solo outing). For lunch, we visited Fisher's Grille, which, once upon a time, was very much a favorite dining/drinking establishment. I hadn't been there in years, though. It's gratifying to find that virtually nothing there has changed. The cajun chicken wings were as awesome as ever. And in the men's bathroom, the same framed newspaper spreads about the 1984 World Series that adorned the walls the first time I visited Fisher's in 1988 are still hanging there. Somehow, that's kind of satisfying.

Another stint writing this afternoon, and then I decided to try my hand at making some hot sauce from the kit that Brugger gave me for Christmas. I went with the smoky chipotle ingredients provided, but added some extra hot red chilis we brought back from Italy. It was my first attempt, and I've gotta say, it's a winner. Delicious flavor and quite hot — though not so hot that Brugger can't tolerate it. I'm about to go roast a chicken breast and try the sauce on it.

Wish the old dude luck. Peace out.

Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill Cover Art Reveal

It’s not the finished version, but here’s the cover design for my upcoming Ameri-Scares novel, Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill. 

In the mid-1950s, the US Army Corps of Engineers built the Buford Dam on the Chattahoochee River and created Lake Sidney Lanier, which covers portions of Hall, Forsyth, Dawson, Gwinnett, and Lumpkin counties. Upon the dam’s completion, 625 billion gallons — give or take an ounce or two — of water submerged 56,000 acres of land, which consisted of several small communities, hundreds of farms, an auto racetrack, and innumerable graveyards. No one knows for sure how many dead bodies lie in those dark depths. In the intervening years, hundreds of people have drowned, died in boating accidents, or simply vanished in Lake Lanier’s waters. In 1958, a car plunged off a bridge into the lake, killing two young women. Since then, a ghostly apparition, known as “The Lady of the Lake” — supposedly, one of the women who died — has frequently been sighted wandering the roadways and bridges along the lake (although I never saw her). In its six and a half decades of existence, Lake Lanier has earned its reputation as the setting for grim happenings.

From the 19th century until the lake’s creation, my mom’s family — the Bell family of Gainesville, GA — owned a mill, called Bell’s Mill, just outside of Gainesville. Mom spent much of her childhood at the mill and frequently told my brother and me many stories about her happy times there. And me, I experienced the best days of my youth in Gainesville at my grandparents’ place. We often went to Lake Lanier, sometimes to swim, sometimes for family reunions, and, on occasion, to visit the site of the old mill — or as close to it as we could get, since the lake had long since claimed that land. Several years ago, on a visit to Gainesville, Ms. B. and I hunted a geocache, aptly titled “Old Bell’s Mill,” close to the mill site. Plus I spent a couple of years at the University of Georgia in Athens, less than an hour from Gainesville. Indeed, I do have a long personal history in this area.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, a family named Tate lived across the street from my grandparents, and my brother and I enjoyed playing with the Tate kids whenever we visited Gainesville. They were a fun, quirky bunch, and it seems only proper that the Tate name should be woven into my upcoming novel. And thus, Tate’s Mill it is.

While the events of the book will be completely fictitious, they are very much inspired by the spooky legends that have arisen around the lake, as well as my decades of personal experience here.

Do stay tuned.

Oh, My Achin’ Feetz

It was a fine weekend for hiking and geocaching, and I put in more mileage, in rugged terrain, than I have in many moons. On my way to Martinsville on Friday afternoon, I detoured to the Knight Brown Preserve, near Belews Lake in Rockingham County, to hunt a cache that’s been awaiting my attention for months now. That hike was about a 3-mile round trip, and though the terrain is not particularly rugged, it presents the hiker with lots of elevation changes. Steep elevation changes. Speaking of elevation changes at the cache coordinates, there was a massive fallen tree over a gully, which offered a splendid vantage point from which to survey one’s kingdom. Always one to appreciate a physical challenge, I was hoping the cache might be up in its branches somewhere, but previous posted logs insinuated that it was not. Never you mind, I decided to go up in that tree anyhow, for we must get our jollies as we can. It was from that vantage point that I noticed the cache, just a few feet away, at a much lower elevation. I would have preferred to have to climb for it, but hey... I found it and signed the log so I could claim it. And I got my jollies in the big tree. That’s a good day.

Once settled at Pleasant Hill for the evening, I ordered some chicken tenders from Coach’s Neighborhood Grill via Doordash, and after the afternoon’s hike, the dead bird hit the spot. I put on This Island Earth for the evening’s entertainment, but I ended up dozing through a portion of it. It’s one of those science-fiction movies from childhood that have stood out in mind for all these years. I’ve watched it a handful of times in the intervening years, but I kind of hate that I missed part of it this time around. I can always watch it again, at least as long as it’s on YouTube. The print excellent — the best I’ve seen of it.

One of the things I adore about Pleasant Hill is the minimal light pollution at night. From the hilltop on which the house rests, the view of the sky is often spectacular. Friday night was very cold but clear, and I spent a little while outside enjoying the view. Even with my phone camera, I got a few decent shots of the constellation Orion.

“Orion, won’t you give me your star sign.”

On Saturday morning, I drove up to Rocky Mount, VA, hoping to claim a recently placed cache and a much older multi (which has been out there since before I started geocaching in 2008) called Grassy Hill Ridge (GCQXD4). The new one was a quick and easy find at a signpost; Grassy Hill Ridge is one that, a few years back, friend Natalie (a.k.a. Ms. Fishdownthestairs) and I had sought, but the first stage was missing, so we hadn’t been able to go on with the hunt. Reaching this cache requires a roughly three-mile hike up and down a rugged mountainside. For most of that hike, the ascent was steady, on a reasonably well-worn trail. However, the last few hundred feet required negotiating a very steep, rocky incline that tested the limits of my stamina. I took even more care than usual in rough terrain, since I was out there alone, a long way from help. I really did not want to fall and bust something worse than my pride. Happily, I made the find and returned to civilization with all parts intact. Aching, but intact.

Grassy Hill Ridge. Not much grass, but lots of rocks. The cache lurks way up at the top of the ridge—
several hundred feet above where I’m standing to take this photo.

Looking down from GZ, with the cache in the foreground. It’s a long, long way down!

After the hike and a late, ungodly overpriced lunch from Dairy Queen, I buzzed back to Greensboro. Ms. B. and I are back watching Game of Thrones from the beginning, so we spent most of the rest of the evening in front of the television, covered with cats.

Sunday, my traditional geocaching day, usually with the No-Dead-Weight Irregulars, was indeed a caching day, but with only friend Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker), as none of the rest of the gang was available. And it was another day of hiking rugged terrain, this time in the Uwharrie Mountains. We planned to meet at the Eldorado Outpost, but I had stopped for a cache on my way there, and Scott happened to see my car as he was passing by. We grabbed that cache and then headed to the trading post. From there, we headed deeper into the forest. We put in a good five miles of hiking in moderate to tough terrain, claimed a slew of caches, and returned to the outpost, where we enjoyed a very good, far more reasonably priced lunch than I’d had at Dairy Queen the previous day.

Old Rodan at “Poser Rock”

Guardrails along the woodland trail. Don’t see that every day.

A couple of tired old farts

Today, Monday, is Presidents Day, but since I’m no longer forced to operate on a company schedule, remembering such days doesn’t come so readily. Ms. B. is off work, though, so she is a woman of leisure today (although she did do a spot of housecleaning this morning, which was good, since the cleaning needed to be done, and it was most definitely her turn... haha). I was all set to finish up this blog and dive into continuing work on Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill, but right about the time I settled into my office chair, I received email notifications that a couple of new caches had just been published. These were over in Graham, on the Long Meadow section of the Haw River Trail. Figuring I might be able to snag the first-to-find honors (which really aren’t a significant honor), I bolted out the door and drove out to the trail. Happily, I was able to find both caches — and, sure enough, I found them first. So, the old sore feet got an additional reason to be sore, though this hike (about 2.5 miles) was not rugged at all. But it was fun. And I got first-to-find.

NOW it’s back to work on the Ameri-Scares book. Toodles.

Passing under Interstate 40/85 on the Haw River Trail

Ground Zero: the cache is there... somewhere.