Thanks For The Viking

I'm thankful for Karl Edward Wagner, who put me in the midst of this pavane with madness that is the eternal life of a writer. If it wasn't for Karl, who I never truly expected to outlive, I'd never have been able to keep my career going and create images like this. He could find gallows humor in anything from a convention banquet meal to either of our various afflictions he and I will never be rid of, even after death.

Misty Mother Fog In A Dead Chicago Dream

The first part there was the last line of a poem some guy whose name I can't recall wrote in Poetry 101, back in the day. May of 82. Can't tell you anything about the poem but those three words. I added the rest many years later.I got off the subject with the last post, I had wanted to talk about what Charles calls "iceberg memories." He brought this up commenting on my Don't Fear The Reaper post. It has rained these last few days, today much colder, but the last couple were simply delusional. Part of that could be my working 17 of the last 18 days, and I had moments of clarity as I simply kept my eyes focused numbly on the road ahead. A wind from the south, it could have been March. Iceberg memories are the ones that are deja vu-like, some underlying event that is so seemingly inconsequential that there is no reason to even own it in your brain. Walking in that rain, I kept thinking back to 1975, I rode my bike to my night job as a dishwasher at Ford City restaurant and later Golden Bear, further down the drive. The entire stretch of 77th Street Drive (you figure out city planning, ok?) between Pulaski and Cicero was empty lots of weeds, can of Pabst Blue Ribbon (none of that cute PBR crap), and a mile's worth of log thoughts. One night in that summer of silk shirts and hair that flew back over my shoulders as I rode down the cracked asphalt, I had an eight-track player on a strap over my shoulder and some nights it was Seger and NINE TONIGHT or NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS, Three Dog Night's SHAMBALA or FAMILY OF MAN, and the one song that always surfaces first is The Eagles' HOTEL CALIFORNIA, hence the title on my last entry. Long-winded am I, yes indeed. Maybe because I'm actually rotating the rods in my brain at a slower pace. But when I am in the March in November rain, walking in the darkness and hearing muted traffic, I always remember that summer I rode a bike across a deserted lot like I was Robert Neville in I AM LEGEND, nobody else alive, the Ford City apartments like a ruined smile as I closed in on Cicero Avenue. Now there is no emptiness, just fast food joints, banks, gangs, Daley College drop outs, abandoned cars and gunfire. Maybe I hear those songs because I want to remember a time when I felt I could actually control my destiny. Another iceberg memory, the rain taking me back thirty years in an eye blink....Wayne

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

Windows lit and unlit. The skin of buildings. I've had the above ad, which was actually on the flip side of a more important article fifteen years. I just love the layout, part of the fun is guessing where the woman is headed, which room, or is it just a short cut across the parking lot of dirt and tar. Anyways. It was one of the unseasonably cool nights as I walked down that winding road and waited for the 383. A breeze from the south, stars and planes dotting the sky. Wishing I had someone to share nights like this with, instead of relying on the voices in my head creating dialogues and situations where the narrator dies YET AGAIN in one of my stories. I'd be pleasantly pleased if at least one of the voices behind my eyelids started talking in a female voice, I'd settle for Phyllis Diller, even. Just so I could say something and get a laugh in return. Instead, I walk the walk. And I'm not alone, there are more like us....Wayne

Back From The Dead

Forget talking about nonstop work to the point of just under a hundred hours in ten days. What free time I had I was writing an essay on cyanide for Salem Press and doing an interview with David Bainbridge for DOORWAYS magazine. See that book cover up there? That was the first time I got killed off, I was a cop named Whitey Sallee. Jerry Williamson, rest his soul, wrote a ton of books and was a decent fellow at conventions in the 90s. This is another book that deserved better notice, as it involved a guy who had a curse put on him so bad shit rained down on him at high noon, not in the middle of the night. Kind of a cool idea, if you think about it. But. I want to talk more about the Caponegro book. I had not finished it when I made the original post, and at the point that Chapter 28 rolls around, it becomes somewhat ludicruous. But only part of it, more involving the main character of the book, Sandy. Or Cassie, depending on who is stalking her. And the book jumps in time, whereas the first half of the book is just a few weeks in July, the ending goes from November into March. As I have said, it can be skimmed, the writing is what was expected in the 1980s and, sadly, even now when you get the WTF? in your head when you find some schlockster won another Stoker award. But there is so much bizarre imagery involving the odd undead and their torture of those stranded on the island. Its the kind of thing Rob Zombie does with bhis remakes of the Herschell Gordon Lewis films like 2000 MANIACS. And the ending is one of the most disturbing and deplorable moments I can recall in anything I've read. Its hard to critique writing of any sort when one writes for a living (insert canned laughter here), but tarnation, mud and thunder. THE BREEZE HORROR, badly named, terribly described in the cover copy, likely given a two week shelf life before one of the Big Four drooled out their next novel, is an experience I hadn't expected to read from start to finish. Something I can no longer say about many of the Big Four's novels....dead on my feet, Wayne

The Breeze Horror, Memories of 1988

Mike Fountain reminded me that The Occult Bookstore used to be in The Flatiron Building, as well as House of Monsters. Myopic Books is still across the street in the midst of regentrified Hell. The latter store has a section that brings back memories of the late 80s, when we had Horror sections instead of Dark Fantasy at all the major bookstores that have closed here since Borders opened. Zebra and Onyx were putting out 15 titles a month. Years ago, I started one of my little quests for the above book, I recalled the cover distinctly, even the author's name. With advent of Google, that proved no help past the info I already knew, that was the author's only novel. (Remind you of anyone?) I found this about five years ago online (yes it takes me awhile...) but I had 58 hours of work last week and thought I'd at least bring in a couple of books to flip between, I also had Charles Beaumont's THE HOWLING MAN. But get this, the book isn't some spooky ghost story. Its what amounts to a zombie novel. Preceding Skipp & Spector's Books of The Dead. Google the book now and you'll find several references to the book as being a cult classic, nothing I saw posted years back, with bloggers referencing the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD and 28 DAYS LATER. Well, the book is just an ok read, probably good by 1988 standards. But, whereas it was the title that always made me recall the book even existed, to see the contents as something so vastly different, people stuck on an island off the NJ coast with toxic rain reanimating corpses...its too bad no one thought to do more with this, maybe give the author confidence to write another book. As Charles noted last week, the same kind of thing still happens with the Hollywood pitch. Maybe it is time to wrote THE COLOUR OUT OF MySPACE."...Wayne

The Breeze Horror, Memories of 1988

House of Monsters

Bob caught this with only the images, which i sent from home. We had been talking about various shops full of goodies like dinosaurs and old books and vinyl records, and I thought of the House of Monsters, which closed about three years back. It was on the third floor of the Flatiron building at North and Milwaukee, the ground floor of which had several intriguing businesses such as The Quaker Goes Deaf, an oldies record store (sadly flooded during heavy rains in the late 90s) and a few small restaurants and tiny shops. The upper floors, accessible from a massive stairwell or the clown-painted hand crank elevator, were artist lofts. This area of Wicker Park was a haunt to Nelson Algren and has been regentrified to the point that nothing is as recognizable now as it was even ten, well, fifteen years ago. Ah, but House of Monsters. I still have a Universal Monsters tie I bought there, a Godzilla one was badly stained by some nasty coffee. Everything one could want, most I could not afford. I found copies of Fangoria I did reviews for and its sister magazine, Gorezone, which had my stories in it, back in the day. 16mm Japanese films, Frankenstein stamps and mousepads and keychains. Dozens of models and ready-made dolls and articulated scary things. Ceiling high racks of VHS tapes ranging from Murders in the Rue Morgue to Nightmare on Bare Mountain, which takes place at a nudist colony. I was able to locate the original version of Carnival of Souls there, about the creepiest, cheaply made film that I've ever seen and highly recommend. I don't know if HoM is selling online now, but i really don't care, because there is no real experience, and joy, and pleasure, as walking up that Frankenstein's castle stairwell and opening the door on such claustrophobic madness.