Commonplace Books

I call my notebooks commonplace books, because the late Karl Edward Wagner used that term. The college notebook doesn't really count, I just happened to have scanned photos. After thirty years, I still don't know why I never finished the sketch of my English prof, James Stronks. These photos go back a good ten years.

Rail Rider/Third Rail

Right about this time of summer, back in 1988, I had been visiting Mark Rainey when he lived in Des Plaines. When he dropped me off at the Cumberland el stop near O'Hare, I told him I would write a story starting off with Mark leaving the parking lot. Most of the story that followed was true. There was a girl near the escalator, the el stop otherwise deserted, which was to be expected at 11 PM on a Saturday, at an obscure el stop sandwiched in-between I-94 inbound and outbound lanes. If you go there now, most of the landscape I describe is still there, although the bank with the flashing time and temp has likely changed hands five times. Jerry Williamson, bless him, decided that he would run my story as "Third Rail," even though the story does not involve electrocution. He seemed to think the new title would refer to an erection. Yep. But who was I to argue? It was the first book published with my name on the back cover (instead of being one of the ...And Ten Other Weird-Weaving Authors!) and I received my copy in between the third and fourth operations on my arm in early 1989. Mort Castle, a writer finally getting recognition he deserves after way to many years, got involved with getting the story reprinted by Innovation comics (sporting a Frank Frazetta cover!) along with Robert McCammon's "Nightrunners" and a few others. It was finally called "Rail Rider" after Karl Edward Wagner changed the title back when it was reprinted in YEAR'S BEST HORROR:XV. Well, Mort contacted me today, and Checker Books is reprinting the comic and, somehow, I'm getting paid MORE this time around than I did for all the other versions combined (and I'm not subtracting the price of buying DARKER MASQUES at Borders). Still scratching my head over this one...Wayne

YBH Complete

These are the covers to the YEAR'S BEST HORROR that I am in, the last nine before Karl died. Wagner was cool enough to get strings pulled so that my name appeared on the back cover of the final edition. I added the other image as an after thought, mostly because it is also shaped roughly the same, and also because it is below zero outside and I don't really want to be typing. When its this cold, even voice activation might not work. My cheeks are so cold that I sound like Abe Vigoda if I say anything at all...

Bobby The Mitch Came Calling

I spent the weekend staring at what I had bought. FLYFusion from Fly World. Then I downloaded it. Because Robert Mitchum came to me in a dream and tormented me. I will be able to hand print on a pad and have it show up on my screen. Sure, I can do the same thing with my scanner, I actually have a folder titled "Notebook," but this gadget might help me assimilate to the scrollboard version that converts the handwriting to typewritten text. Mitch showed up in my dream much like he did as described in my story "Mitch," in FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT as well as in the form of a podcast on the TwilightTales website. I'm not entirely certain, but he might have even come to me in a NyQuil and vanilla ice cream vision and had me creat the Bobby The Mitch blog you can link to off to the left. I still haven't tried to use it yet, perhaps tomorrow. Maybe tonight, John Agar or Elvis will come kick my ass, with Karl Edward Wagner humiliating me by saying that even a Viking like himself would try it out...Wayne

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.

De Beste Horror, Wayne In Dutch

Kees Buis is one cool guy. I came across Dutch editions of Year's Best Horror while Googling images one night, and after waiting a few days to contact Kees, not certain if he was a collector or bookseller, I emailed him about the two books above and he found them in his inventory. I received them in the mail on Thursday, it was kind of neat getting mail from The Netherlands. I put together a box of signed books for Kees to mail during the coming week. I have other books I am in, French, German, and quite oddly, Danish. It is strange seeing familiar words and names. These books, the table of contents in particular, make me melancholy, as they are editions from very early in my career, 1987 and 1988. The stories were "Bleeding Between The Lines" and "The Touch." I see names of people recently dead, several gone for over a decade. Thinking about how young I was when these stories came out almost twenty years ago. Anyone who can pick up a copy of ANY edition of Year's Best Horror (published in the US by DAW) can expect to find some of the finest writing of the late twentieth century. And time goes on, keyboards clacking away, those of us who still can and still have stories to tell...Wayne

The Devil Its Due

Chalk it up to a 14 hour shift (Monday/Tuesday), 8 the next (today), and then, inexplicably, I am working tomorrow from 9 AM until 1 AM Thursday. But my sleep habits are nil. I don't even know if that sentence makes sense. In the last half hour I have drank coffee, mango juice, and now ice water. I was watching RACE WITH THE DEVIL at 3 this morning, a great bad film from 1975 with Peter Fonda and Warren "I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit" Oates, where satanic bikers chase them as they drive a Winnebago all around the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. I look at the Chinese poem about the banyan tree, hoping to get drowzy. I listen to Yusef tell me the city is bad after dark. (Well duh.) I Google the advertisement that says Hayden Panitierre has got milk. (To keep it a level field, Masi Oka also has milk.) Still awake. Google "asian cult cinema" and see above. The button was a birthday gift from my niece Ashley. She knows I am afraid of clowns. Have any of you been told the story behind my fear of clowns? Its quite vivid and graphic. Christ, I wish I could drink some whiskey with my vanilla ice cream, but I only hit the booze roller coaster at conventions, trying to carry on Karl Edward Wagner's legacy to little avail. (But, damn, the Zanzibar club in Toronto was amazing; a Romanian girl told me all about a Romanian doctor who performed belly button surgeries for would-be strippers. Guess I can now write the, ah, bar bill off as story research). And, since being in Canada that first week of April, I have had two Budweisers. That is all. Roller coasters are better when blacking out in foreign lands. Bob thinks I should write a memoir without explaining who people are, like no footnotes or whatever, so this should be one whack-job entry. Ten after midnight. If I went to sleep now, I'd lie awake until 2. Guess I'll Google that asian cult site again...Wayne

Teal Tell All (Then Back To The Old Haunts)

Within seconds of my blog post, Von sent a comment; I felt like Charlie typing in the entry code for Good Vibrations in The Looking Glass and Penny pops up almost immediately. Of course, anybody who doesn't watch LOST will not get this observation, but you could always email Sid or Larry. Sid mentioned a pun on a Wayne shade of teal, which reminds me of a similar line after my late friend and editor of Year's Best Horror wrote "Burst Just Ghostly." I told him the next line must be "turn a Wagner shade of Ka-arrl." (Bastardized Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale," for you young'uns out there, a song that will be played at my funeral). Charles queried on just HOW teal could be a doorway to madness, well, it CAN be. But I have Johnny Cash and Robert Mitchum as my gatekeepers.

Back to the Draculs (no typo) and Am'tyville thangs. Old Haunts, Night Two. I hardly get to downtown Chicago anymore, certainly not during the day. I miss seeing my fellow meltdowns, like old Ellroy trudging back to the Thompson Building, mumbling to himself. And probably in a better state of mind than me. Maybe he's talking with a ghostly Karl Edward Wagner or tapping out Baa Ba Baa BA BA bum ba5 over and over in my, um, his head.

The Scar Back Then Still White

I'm starting to use future titles from my commonplace book--the term for notebook in Karl Edward Wagner's honor, Sid maybe you'll take the weight after I'm in the wind--because at least they will be on the blog for others to get inspiration. "Still Crazy, After All These Fears." All yours. I'm being generous. I have started a purge, spending the last day decimating my bookshelves, losing one for every ten. Minor things along with the desecrated books went to the Salvation Army this morning. The books are in the crawlspace, my room is almost barren. This keyboard echoes like an electric typewriter, though the sound might just be that of my Frankenstein fingers. Today I had to post that Far Side cartoon, one of Gary Larson's best efforts. It sums up my every move when it comes to make anything work on a daily basis, my body keeps waking up every day, is what it is. Damned if I open my eyes, the same goes if they stay sewed shut. I always thought a noble death would be like Hartigan's, the Bruce Willis character in SIN CITY, instead, I wear pads on my back and neck that cause my skin to burn but I really don't give a fuck because I want to keep writing, whether this, my somewhat private notes to my somewhat private friends, or in the stories I need to write like "When It's Said And Done." I honestly think that once I finish CITY WITH NO SECOND CHANCES there will be no more me. I keep putting the novel off, but my mental state is so so so close to Frank St. Cyr's that his soul is bleeding inside me. I will write the story I mentioned above--about what would be my last trip home to Shelbyvbille, Kentucky--then continue in this barren room that is my body and my brain. Thanks for listening. Your chattel, Wayne

No More Photos, I Swear On Elvis's Grave

I am pretty much at the end of this portion of this second life. Seems as if complete strangers to my blog, like jane is dating, along with regulars like Lucas Pederson insist I stop with the photos. OK, so no photos of me with a pig nose, or with the bandages off and metal sutures in my nose (I thought one was a nose hair and battled pulling it out, bad idea). By 1995, I had had 12 operations, both on my arm and my head. The following year I had a kidney stone, but that is not even worthy of a tale, unless you want graphics about a clamp being placed into...well, I can't even continue. Instead, I have posted two simple shots. The first is my little laboratory by the computer, with Steve McQueen threatening to shoot me if I stop writing, The Gentleman (from Buffy) and my favorite pest, the Psycho-Pirate. The second photo shows my handwriting close up. Pretty good with my left hand again, 17 years after the accident. The damn right hand still sucks donkey dick at anything (my big joke is that if I try and masturbate with my right hand I might as well be trying to push my dick through a Play-Doh Fun Factory), and the writing still shows like a damn EKG chart. I had to use my right hand to sign medical documents, bills, even a few books. Why the HELL was I using my middle name even when I was signing an agreement that it was OK to put me under anesthesia? Regardless, it was during this time that I started using gel pens. I'm hurting as I type this, simply from using donkey dick to write three words, the brain impulses are flying all over, maybe the hand will think it can turn into that movie monster Beast With Five Fingers. Peter Graves, right, Sid? Charles? (I think Sternberg was actually in the film, through his latex time portal). I may be writing with no real direction here because I am listening to a CD of Afrikaans music that Etain mailed me and my blood pressure seems to have flattened out by listening to Laurika Rauch and Anton Goosen. It is like music you would hear in the background of a film that involved a journey of some sort. Which kind of brings me back to the stasrt of my second life. Obviously I continued writing, for better or worse, til death do I part. I have been saddened at the passing of writers from the generation before mine, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Bloch, and Evan Hunter. I'm watching new writers like Lucas Pederson, Barton Fanning, Drizel Burger, and others put their toes in the literary pool. And I remain in the trenches with Sid and Larry and Bob and Roger, moving forward story by story, getting closer to The Big Break. My luck, I'll finally get noticed but will lose in a coin toss to a transgendered dwarf named Vinnie Cthulhu and fall back into the relative obscurity I live in now. Glad I'm not being graded on this essay. Over and out.