Sunday Meditation: Father Bukowski Speaks of Hells Left Behind

For the longest time, like a good, well-trained citizen of these United States, I used to consider myself a failure for not having a career. In my half-century-plus of existence, I’ve never worked anywhere longer than three years, if that long.

But then I think back on those places where I worked, and it saddens me that people could be so soul-dead as to not mind coming into those same places every day, dealing with those same awful people every day, watching the seasons change through the same plate-glass window year after year. 

Watching each other grow old, talking about days until retirement like you’re all waiting to get out of prison—a prison you campaigned to get into, and worked like a fool draft horse stay in, because you’re no one if you’re not wearing someone’s brand of striped pajamas. If you do not belong—as in, you are not owned by someone who commands your time for 30 or more hours a week, why, that’s just the worst.

All love and respect to those out there making the wheels go round in the cubicle farms and whatnot, but the idea of still working at any one of the places where I used to work back in the day fills this basement-dwelling horror writer with cold, nauseous dread. Father Bukowski wasn’t cut out for that madness, and neither am I.

All Horror Is Local: Tunnels of Blood

I got this image from the Facebook page of Wonderful World of Horror. One immediately wonders if, a) this is a photo of the actual tunnel described in the caption, and, b) how much traffic passes through it daily.

Of especial interest to my morbid imagination is how it might go for a murderer about to do the deed in such a place already infested with the confused, albeit reflexively vengeful spirits of murdered children. An idea to explore for later...I’m looking forward to branching out with my monsters once I finish writing my SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER. 

Meanwhile, I note that my city of Colorado Springs has several haunted tunnels up on Gold Camp Road going up into the hills, with curiously similar tales of stopped cars that won’t start again and children’s laughter, etc. Both of my children have spent time there as part of the local teen rite-of-passage. I’m told it’s an eerie, unsettling experience.

Thoughts I Had About Writing While in the Shower and Trying Not to Think Too Hard About My Work in Progress

Elaborating on what Father Bukowski has spoken to us in regards to how this dirty, valiant game is played.

• If you are going to be a writer—a Real Writer™, not some hapless wannabe thirsting for validation from your writer’s group— you have to enjoy your own company.
• Not only must you enjoy your own company, you must trust yourself. You must learn to trust yourself more than you trust other people. This isn’t as obvious or as easy as it sounds. Why else are we so anxious for upvotes and Likes in social media if we don’t trust ourselves to feel good about ourselves?
• For best results on your work in progress, you must become that smug jerk so secure in his vision that other people hate you for it—and the fact you won’t even do them the courtesy of returning their hatred (you don’t see them; they are outside your Mission) should make them hate you even more.
• All that said, never, ever forget the Prime Directive: to provide your reader with a satisfying, and ultimately entertaining experience. If you’re writing to send a Message, hie thee to seminary school. Or thumb out a Tweet. 
• You should already know narrative structure and how stories work, and you damn sure better know how to tell a joke.
• Invest yourself. If you don’t care for your characters and their suffering throughout the trials you visit upon them, no one else will, either. Also, as the Dark God responsible for making your protagonist’s life a living hell, you owe it to your creations that their miseries make sense within the terms of the world you’ve created.

Okay, that covers it. All the writing advice anyone could ever use. God knows how people build entire blogs over multiple posts daily for years and years saying the same things I said above, over and over again.

If you’ve come this far, here’s a photo of a note I made to myself years ago while I was bashing out the early drafts of Bleeding Kansas. It’s solid advice, even if I did end up settling for a plane crash instead.

Okay, break’s over. Let’s get back to work.

My Twitter Milestone, and Other News

State of the Apocalypse, Mid-December Monday 2015

I finally feel secure in having over 1,000 Twitter followers now that some of the spammy accounts I haven’t followed back have dropped off. I still need to curate my list for accounts that have proven to be stealth-spammers, but this is looking good. The great bulk of them are authors and horror fans and people who simply like to read, and that’s as it should be. I’m a long way from October 2014 when I had all of 36 followers, and decided to get serious with the platform. 

I didn’t pay one red cent for these people. Save for the few spammy ones I’ve missed, these are all real authors, real fans, real people, and I’m damned proud to (sort of) know them.

Twitter has helped keep my blog visits and book sales going years after most people’s books and brand fade. It’s no secret how this works, and I’m not charging you for the advice, so you’ll probably ignore me when I tell you that you must give Twitter love to get Twitter love. Which is fine. It’s not a matter of less competition for me—my preferred mindset is abundance mentality; these people are colleagues, not competitors—it’s that if you’re so damn dense that you cannot comprehend the most fundamental principle of the universe, that What Goes Around Comes Around, we don’t need you on the team. 

This guy.

At this point I need to shout-out to my unwitting mentor, @BleedingCritic of BleedingCritic.com. Bleeding Critic was there at the beginning when I elected to quit goofing around and get invested. It’s been inspirational watching the man behind the mask build his site with thoughtful, comprehensive reviews of horror films, along with original spoken-word content, and Skyped-in testimonials of favorite moments in horror films from fans. Me, I’ll be happy to finish writing this next book. This guy, he could make himself famous with his mad Photoshop skills alone. Yet he does so much more, and all for straight-up love of horror cinema, from the soundtracks to the cinematography to the part that made you hide your face in the throw pillow. You can’t fake that. If you’re a fan of horror cinema, you owe yourself a look at Bleeding Critic’s site.

I need to do another Skype review just for this. He’s got another version of this image with the clown  mask on the boy’s head second-from-right. Bleeding Critic’s Photoshop-fu is unbeatable.

In other news, I did manage to write a full page beyond what happened to that unfortunate soldier at the cold dead hands of Abby Cadaver yesterday, and I’m within striking distance of finishing that chapter. I’ve got so much further to go, but for the first time in maybe six months, I don’t feel like I’m spinning my wheels. (Fun fact: I don’t get writer’s block. I get goddamn son-of-a-whoring pissshit stuck. It’s not a metaphorical wall I can’t get around; it’s virtual mud I can’t get traction in.)

My partner in pixelated fiction, James Robert Smith, finally finished his COALITION trilogy and is working on exciting new stuff. And I’m finally over 1,000 Twitter followers. It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.

A Horror Writer Looks at Christmas and Finds...Horror

I like my Christmas nice and Christmassy, so I’m not into the Krampus krap that seems to be all the rage among the horror community this time of year. By that same principle, I’d rather not mix Christmas with horror at all. Nothing personal, it’s just me. I simply prefer at least six weeks out of the year when peace on Earth and good will towards Men still mean something.

I only mention this to provide context for the magnitude of my consternation, as I’ve once again suffered an example of how being an author who writes about reanimated corpses that eat people can mess you up regardless. For instance, I saw this on my Twitter feed tonight...

 ...and thought, OH MY GOD, THE SEAS HAVE TURNED TO BLOOD!

Yeah, given the sick narrative I’ve been laying down recently, I can’t say I’m surprised. I should probably take a break for the holidays. But when you’re finally rolling after a long hard slog of sluggish seasons, you don’t want to stop. Besides, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. It’s time to wrap this thing up, and put a sweet bow on it while I’m at it.

State of the Apocalypse: A Lunch Date with Abby Cadaver

This is exactly where I am with The Wrong Kind of Dead as of 3:39 p.m., GMT -7, on 13 December 2015. What follows from pp. 217-218 of my work-in-progress is NSFW, NSFL, not safe for anything. If you puke, don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is flat nasty:

The camera follows Abby as she jerks and pulls the big man alongside of her. Once she gets to a spot near the bridge over the creek, with the trees in the background, she halts, and slaps the man hard across his face. He stops his whimpering long enough for Abby to grasp his naked buttocks and pull him to her. She silences whatever else might follow with her lips on his.

Judging by his build, this soldier invested many hours in the weights room. All that strength and power he worked so hard for proves useless against the monster animating the firm, feminine form of whoever’s child this used to be. By the bulging of his eyes and cheeks, she’s working her cold white tongue inside his mouth. He squirms helplessly as one hand grips his gluteals, the other claws around the back of his head.

Abby pulls back, her face alight as if she just found love, before burying her face into the pectoralis major above his left nipple. The naked man screams as Abby gnaws and pulls a chunk of muscle-meat with her teeth, throwing her head back to gulp at the blood while masticating the tissue. The hot red blood stands out starkly against her cold ivory flesh. Her legs wrap around one of his and her hips grind and pump as she plunges her face into the soldier’s chest for a second helping.

“Can you just tell me the takeaway here?” I say. “Other than there are some dead skanks out there who get sexually aroused eating hunky boys?”

I’ve got to shovel the snow from the driveway while thinking of Dr. Hearn’s reply to Derek Grace. The living dead have evolved throughout the SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER but there’s nothing magical to them. They don’t use telepathy; they don’t sprint. They have developed hierarchy, however. The elite practice discipline to improve themselves while their lieutenants enforce unit cohesion among the rank and file. They communicate via body language and chemical signals, like ants. 

Although they don’t talk, the upper caste dead have distinct personalities. If you think Abby Cadaver here is a pip, wait until you meet the Emperor of Ice Cream.  

As the living dead’s preferred food source has managed to make itself scarce in every sense of the word, they have determined an ecologically lethal way to flush it out. The Emperor’s plan is so brilliant Derek Grace and the best minds among the surviving humans might not be able to stop his millions-strong hordes of flesh-eating corpses. The numbers are against them as it is.

To quote Tommy Lee Jones’ character in No Country for Old Men, if this ain’t a mess, it’ll do ‘til the mess gets here. I’ve got a lot to sort out. Good thing I have a driveway full of wet, heavy snow. It’ll be good to get this head full of monsters out into the sunshine for a change. Too much time in the basement makes me strange.

Meanwhile, here are the first two books building to this final flesh orgy of macabre apocalyptic mayhem. My saga starts off very basic, then gets subtly weirder as it goes along. These books are available in Kindle and paperback, in Canada and the UK:

Thing 1.

Derek Grace leaves his sick wife in Colorado Springs for a job interview in Kansas City. But in a few short days the early summer cold becomes the Final Flu, and as infrastructure breaks down, Grace finds himself miles from home, trapped between anxious police and National Guard, and all those Final Flu victims arising from their mass graves to attack the living. The long-unemployed Grace soon discovers a new skill set that serves him well in the New Weird Order. He’s a long way from home, and the risen dead aren’t the only ones in his way.

Only the strong will survive BLEEDING KANSAS.

Thing 2.

Returning too late from his Kansas adventure to save his wife and teenage children, Derek Grace loses himself in booze, books, pills, and the occasional killing spree among the undead. But then a stowaway and her fatal secret flush the Dead Silencer from hiding and back into a busy post-apocalypse in progress, where he must decide whether life is worth living when he’s already lost everything that matters.

In the heart of darkest horror, you will find
GRACE AMONG THE DEAD.

Sunday Sermonette: “What is terrible is not death”

PROFANITY WARNING if such things bother you, and that’s okay. Father Bukowski was a salty dog. And as we read in the Gospel According to Mark, Chapter 9, verse 50: “Salt is good: but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”

The Truth here is worth pondering. However, as you nod your head, thinking, Hey, I know people like that, take a step back. Take a breath, and ask yourself: Am I maybe one of these people myself? We’re not always as cool as we like to think we are.

And now the lesson is yours.