From Zombos' Closet

Book Review: Guilty Pleasures Reviewed by Professor Kinema

As a Cinema Historian, archivist, and collector, I especially enjoy being on just about everyone's mailing list. This results in an influx of catalogues. Always one of my favorites is the latest from the Midnight Marquee Press. Of the many books offered by this small, but dedicated press are two edited by Gary J. Svehla and Susan Svehla called Guilty Pleasures of the Horror Film and Son of Guilty Pleasures of the Horror Flim. 

The Kinema Archives houses many periodicals from the house of Gary and Susan Svehla. It makes one pine for the days of FanEx when one could visit their table and peruse the piles of literary treasures on display. Like all true MonsterKid-friendly dealers, a bargain could always be gotten. The more one bought, the more one could get a deal and all were interesting and welcome additions to any and all libraries of fantastic literature.

Both Guilty Pleasures books offer interesting insights into B movies such as Rodan, Two Lost Worlds, The Indestructible Man, The Tingler, Frankenstein's Daughter, Robot Monster and Giant Gila Monster among others.

True, as the titles of the books would indicate, as well as the catalogue descriptions state, these are far from cinematic masterpieces. Yet because they are less than perfect (or even good by any sense of the word) they are still fun to watch and entertainingly so. Personal reasons why they are treasured are given in individual essays by authors like Tom Weaver, John Parnum, Gary Don Rhodes and Don Leifert. These reasons ring true. The cover of the first book is a different design than the one housed in the Kinema Archives, but the content is the same.

These two books offer a counterbalance to how these films are written about in other books; mainly 'scholar' Bill Warren's Keep Watching the Skies. The above mentioned films, along with many others, get far less than positive individual treatments in his third (count 'em three) refurbished edition of his work. In a film genre he claims to have a true affection for he finds a variety of truly pseudo-creative ways for trashing them, as well as insulting the 'auteurs' involved.

Truly, one could view these films, research them by consulting previously published accounts and critiques, seek out and interview people involved in the making of them, and offer personal opinion, but determining them to be guilty pleasures provides refreshing insight.

Many of the other book titles offered in the Midnight Marquee Press catalogue, as well as Warren's opus, are all welcome additions to the Kinema Archives, too.

Teenage Monster (1958) Pressbook

Howco International distributed many Drive-In movies during the 1950s, and their campaign books (sometimes presented as a folder with inserts if  a double-bill) are concise and neatly arranged. This campaign book is for Teenage Monster. Two things you should know about this movie: Jack Pierce had a hand in the hairy monster's makeup, and it's a horror western that takes place around 1880. Otherwise, it doesn't live up to the "teenage titan of terror on a lustful binge" billing. 

Mexican Lobby Card: Reptilicus

Before trolls started roaming Norway in TrollHunter, Reptilicus was chomping on Denmark. Although this giant behemoth looks more like a Chinese dragon in the illustration than a reptile.

Mexican Lobby Card: Brain of Blood

The determination on the doctor's face, the weird device he's holding shooting out an energy beam, the savage determination on the ghoul's face, and its strategic grappling around a bosomy chest; what more can you ask for in a lurid Mexican lobby card for Brain of Blood?

The 4 Stages of Your Writing Career By Scott M. Baker

There’s an old joke that states an author has four stages in his or her career. There’s the first stage when a reader walks into a bookstore, lifts your book off of the shelf and asks, “Who the hell is Scott M. Baker?”

There’s the second stage when a reader walks into the bookstore and asks the sales clerk, “Do you have the latest book by Scott M. Baker?”

There’s the third stage when a reader walks into the bookstore and asks the sales clerk, “Do you have any books by authors who write like Scott M. Baker used to?”

And finally the fourth stage when a reader walks into a bookstore, lifts your book off of the shelf and asks, “Who the hell is Scott M. Baker?”

For anyone who has been published, there’s too little humor and too much reality in that joke.

Every author has to endure that first stage. Even Stephen King and J. K. Rowling were unknown entities at one time, at least until readers became aware at how incredibly adept they were at story telling. Now they’re household names. If only the rest of us were that lucky.

The sad truth, however, is that most authors will never make it beyond the first stage. If they’re really fortunate. If they’re good at telling a story, or developing great characters, or writing catchy dialogue. If they’re lucky enough to find a publisher who will distribute their books nationally. If the day their book comes out they’re not competing with an instant bestseller such as a kiss-and-tell book from one of Tiger Wood’s mistresses, or the latest Dan Brown tome, or a diet plan on how to lose weight by eating red velvet cheese cake, or the biography of a pet the cover of which is adorned with an incredibly cute ball of fur. And if, over time, they are fortunate enough to develop a small, loyal cabal of readers who will follow them regularly and read everything they write, then an author might pull in enough money annually to make ends meet (as long as they have an understanding spouse with a really good day job).

Depressed yet?

If you said no, then you truly are a writer. Not necessarily a good writer. Or a prolific writer. Or a rich and famous writer. But a writer, nonetheless. Someone consumed by the hunger of putting words to paper. Someone who can listen to a quirky story on the news or spot a unique looking individual on the street, and within an hour have the plot of a story or novel mentally outlined. Someone who brings their laptop on vacation because you can’t relax and enjoy yourself if you haven’t written something that day. For us, the writing is the passion, and seeing a complete story or novel in print is reward enough (though none of us will shut the door on fame and fortune if it comes knocking).

For those of you following me, you know that I have entered that dreaded first stage of the writer’s career. The first two books of my vampire trilogy are in print, with the third scheduled for publication this October. My first zombie novel should be out in 2012. Now I have to come to grips with the reality that writing the first novel and getting it published was the easy part. There will be plenty of work in the months ahead to market myself and attract readers, with the goal of reaching stage two. It’s going to be a long road, with no guarantee I’ll reach my goal.

For those of you who are just starting your writing career, over the next few weeks I’ll be offering some words of advice on how to get that first novel written and published. Will it guarantee you success as a writer?  No. Will it be depressing yet irreverent? Yes on both counts. My goal is hopefully to encourage beginning authors to pursue their passion and to let you know you are not alone.  

So get your notebooks ready.

 

About Scott M. Baker

Born and raised outside of Boston, Massachusetts, I’m a horror/urban fantasy author who now lives in northern Virginia. I’ve authored several short stories, including “Rednecks Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things” (which appeared in the autumn 2008 edition of the e-zine Necrotic Tissue); “Cruise of the Living Dead” (which appeared in Living Dead Press’ Dead Worlds: Volume 3 anthology); “Deck the Malls with Bowels of Holly” (which appeared in Living Dead Press‘ Christmas Is Dead anthology); “Denizens” (which appeared in Living Dead Press’ The Book of Horror anthology); and the e-chapbook “Dead Water” by D’Ink Well Publications.

My most recent works include The Vampire Hunters trilogy, which is being published both in electronic format (by Shadowfire Press) and print (by Pill Hill Press). Recently, I signed a contract with Permuted Press to publish in 2012 my first zombie novel, Rotter World, which details the struggle between humans and vampires during a zombie apocalypse. And I’m finishing up my fifth novel, which will be a homage to the monster movies of the 1950s set in northern New Mexico.

Please visit my website at http:\\scottmbakerauthor.blogspot.com.

Movie Review: TrollHunter (2010) Troll-ble With Giants

Zombos Says: Very Good

I had two questions in mind after watching Andre Ovredal’s TrollHunter: Why does Hans (Otto Jespersen) work alone, and why can’t American Horror movies take off-the-wall risks like this small budget Norwegian movie more often? 

Hans is the laconic troll hunter followed by three students from Volda College. They’re filming a documentary about bear poaching and he’s pointed out by the local hunters who suspect him because he’s a stranger. He tells them to go away, but they persist and follow him at night, deep into the woods. Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), the leader of the trio, makes a joke about meeting inbred pig farmers (but this is not a French Horror movie, so he needn’t worry).

Now comes the refreshingly audacious part: flashes of light and strange roars in the distance, followed by Hans running past them yelling “Troll!” I’m thinking this is going to be silly and it is, terrifyingly so. The troll crashes through the trees he nearly towers over and hunts them. All of the trolls in this movie are big or bigger, slow moving, and look like Jim Henson’s furry Muppets, but uglier and nastier than you’d find on Sesame Street. They are also quick to kill in this mockumentary, especially if they smell Christian blood. Hans isn't sure about a Muslim's blood when asked if the trolls hate it, too.

Hans uses UV light to turn the three-headed troll chasing them to stone. Later, the veterinarian he works with explains the biological factors behind that for us, but UV light either makes them explode if they’re young, or turns them into concrete if they’re old. Seriously. It’s this droll seriousness that keeps TrollHunter’s humor from trumping it’s chills, which come each time we meet different trolls,  each getting bigger as we do. Telling Thomas, Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) the cameraman, and Johanna (Johanna Morck)—who holds onto a boom microphone—that he "doesn’t get a night bonus," Hans finally agrees to let them follow him as he hunts trolls for the Troll Security Service. The TSS, using bear attacks as a cover, is not happy Hans let the secret out.

The funniest images happen when the veterinarian tells Hans she needs a blood sample. The needle he uses is a tad smaller than the one they used in the Amazing Colossal Man, but it’s still big enough to be a clown’s prop. Dressing in what looks like a suit of armor with a big red button on his chest, he carries a bucket filled with a “Christian man’s blood” to attract a troll living under a bridge. There’s a terminal amount of blood in that bucket so I wonder how he got it. After getting chomped on, slammed, and dunked by the annoyed troll, Hans warns Thomas not to touch the button as Thomas helps him up.

Given the this-is-film-footage-found-after-the-fact style of this movie, with the now standard night-vision scenery and budgeted special-effects viewing angles further obscured by shaky-cam, the story hangs onto its Blair Witch quality of suspenseful immediacy at the cost of details, especially when that footage ends abruptly.

Even so, the American remake is already around the corner. We're always good at taking safe risks after others take the more riskier ones.

Book Review: Dog Blood

Zombos Says: Very Good

This conflict wasn't faction versus faction or army against army; it was individual versus individual, more than six billion armies of one. Beyond that, the Hate didn't care who you were, where you were, or what you were. You were simply on one side or the other, your position in this new, twisted, f**ked-up world decided without your involvement by unknown variables and fate.

The beauty of David Moody’s Dog Blood is how you can read so much or so little into it. Pile on the metaphors of your choice and pontificate away, or ignore them and become mired in a broken world crumbling down around broken lives. This downward spiral of  hopelessness, of collapsing societies, of forlorn, shock-weary masses of people crushing in on themselves, and of mindless hatred leading to endless killing is depressing, frightening, and shamefully engrossing.  

Picking up the apocalyptic speed from Hater, his first book in this it's-them-or-us trilogy, the Unchanged are struggling against shattered selves and the Haters, those aggression-infected individuals who hunt and kill anyone not like them; family members kill family members, strangers kill strangers, friends kill friends, grinding them into bloody pulp in the process. As in any good horror play, the Haters are more organized, more determined, and much more deadly than the Unchanged, who are herded into the cities and penned up by the military providing questionable protection while stripping away their humanity, and quelling any incursion of agression by mass obliteration of the infected area. Making a terrible situation worse are the Brutes, a new generation of Haters that are stronger, totally unreasoning, and never tire of killing. They're like Saruman's Uruk-hai in the Lord of the Rings.

Danny McCoyne, a Hater, has one goal: to find his five year old daughter, Ellis. He will stop at nothing to accomplish his goal because she is like him. We watch and follow him through his own voice, but this is no longer only about him. There are millions of others, on both sides, and Moody slices chapters between Danny's search for his daughter and Danny's Unchanged cousin, Mark--and his squalid existence--to open up the bigger situation all around both of them enough to slip it all neatly into a handbasket and kick it hard and fast down a steep slope leading straight to a hellish climax of destruction. 

Mark is one of thousands of Unchanged, holding on with exasperation and desperation as food, water, shelter, and safety dwindle. Assigned a small hotel room by the military, he shares it with his pregnant wife, her overwhelmed-to-shutdown parents who can't get out of bed, and someone else hiding in the locked bathroom. Mark tries to keep it all under control but failure is imminent when another person, a loudly complaining stranger, is dumped in the room with them, by the military, in spite of his protests. 

As Mark deals with escalating frustration and worries over his unborn child, Danny fumes at being delayed from finding Ellis by an organized group of Haters who have a secret plan for killing every Unchanged man, woman, and child, and by the bipartisan-thinking Mallon, a man who forces Danny to control his hate enough to keep him from bashing heads in at every opportunity. Their combined effect on Danny make him question the ultimate purpose of everyone involved, including his own.

Moody piles up the rotting bodies in every nook and cranny without remorse or compassion because heroics and sanity play no part in this shattered world. His paragraphs are long but concise and filled with small details to describe much, like the ubiquitousness of the dead when Danny realizes he's stepping on a corpse only by the crunching sound of its brittle fingers he's grinding underfoot.

Even now I can hear those metaphors rustling furtively in your brain and similes kicking up gray dust. Just remember it's only a novel, though it would be best if you read it on the beach during a bright summer day. 

Dementia 13 (1963) Pressbook

The movie gimmick here is the D-13! Test, a questionaire theaters could hand out to "...screen out those persons who may be adversely affected by this picture." Question 12 is the one I'd pay particular attention to: "The most effective way of settling a dispute is with one quick stroke of the axe to your adversary's head?" I'd answer yes to that one. How about you?

Movie Review: Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)

Zombos Says: Poor (but goes well with crackers)

 

“Atrocious lighting, abominable story, ludicrous Neanderthal men dressed in furs and carrying clubs, and thrift store couture from the costume department; shall I go on?”

I folded my arms tightly, waiting for Paul Hollstenwall to counter my argument. I dared him to find a shred of decent creativity or craft in Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks.

“Michael Dunn as Genz, the necrophilic, breast-squeezing pervert,” he replied. “He brings a little respectability to it, don’t you agree?” Paul’s wide, earnest, eyes drilled into me.

“So you’re saying the small part Dunn plays was a wise career move?”

“Well, it’s not like he can pick and choose from a variety, really. He’s a dwarf. After the Wild, Wild, West, what else is there?”

I thought about what Paul said. “True. But Genz is a long drop from playing the mirthfully nefarious Dr. Miguelito Loveless. A very long drop.”

Paul leaned back and took a sip of lemonade. We were sitting in the solarium, enjoying the warmth, peace, and quiet, next to the pelargoniums, whose scent of chocolate wafted through the room. Zombos and Zimba were out and about, hence the peace and quiet. The aftertaste of that movie still lingered in my mouth, no matter how much lemonade I drank.

 

There is no peace or quiet in Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, otherwise known as Terror! Il Castello Delle Donne Maledette. The plot ignores incredulity, but makes for a perfect accompaniment to crackers when viewed after two or more glasses of Chianti.

Dr. Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi), using a Walmart-bought laboratory, operates on Goliath, one of two Neanderthal men terrorizing the countryside. The other is Ook, but I’ll get to him in a minute. For now, just sit back, close your eyes, and think about it. That’s right. It’s that awful and dopey. This is the first time I’ve ever used the word ‘dopey’ in a review.

Genz is one of Frankenstein’s assistants, but his habit of feeling up the nocturnal goods, fresh from the grave, gets him into trouble. He’s sent packing, to roam the countryside simmering with revenge on his mind. He and Ook find each other and become fast friends. Ook is the other Neanderthal terrorizing the villagers. Genz teaches Ook all he knows about sexual deviancy, which terrorizes the villagers even more. Even Mexican horror movies don’t stoop this low.

Frankenstein’s other assistants include a lecherous hunchback (“come with me, we go to woodshed!”), who fools around with the cook. The cook looks a lot like the ugly sister, Doris, in Shrek. Their pantry hanky-panky upsets her husband, the clumsy butler, Hans (Luciano Pigozzi). Visiting the castle are Frankenstein’s daughter Maria (Simonetta Vitelli) and fiancé, and her friend Krista (Christiane Rucker), who studies science and becomes fascinated by the savings Frankenstein accomplishes by using all that Walmart laboratory equipment. A portrait with moving eyes watches Krista take a bath, and eyes behind a wall clock’s glass door watches Maria make love to her fiancé. We watch in horror—not the good horror movie kind—as flaccid close-ups, lethargic pacing, and choppy zooms make high-school theatrical endeavors appear to have more carefully arranged production values than this production. The accompanying music sounds mostly like someone gargling throughout the movie.

While Frankenstein shows Krista his “accumulator,” Genz shows Ook how to cook meat in Ook’s real man-cave. Gratuitous nudity is provided by Maria and Krista bathing in the man-cave’s natural hot tub, but they act like sisters unfortunately.

Not much heat is generated by the sparse showing of townsfolk, who light the torches to go after Ook when a local girl is killed. When Genz sneaks back to the laboratory to free Goliath, that Neanderthal brute kills the hunchback, the butler, and Frankenstein. I confess I was glad he did that. After Ook grabs Krista—she returned to bathe in the man-cave again—he and Goliath go into smackdown mode. Both smack each other back and forth until Goliath kills Ook.

(Note to self: suppress urge to write ‘he does it with a left (h)Ook)’.)

The villagers show up to kill Goliath.

Inexplicably, Krista hugs Genz, the homicidal pervert as the movie ends on a philosophical note when someone sums it all up: “There’s a bit of a monster in all of us.”

Travelogues have more drama. Watch one instead.

Book Review: Ghosts of Coronado Bay A Maya Blair Mystery

Zombos Says: Good

In the dark depths of the ocean, the Black Lady settled to the bottom in a cloud of silt and muck. The fish and lobsters, the only living witnesses, hurried out of its way. In the eternal blackness, the spirits of the dead howled with grief and anger. All except two.

 

“You snore enough to wake the dead.”

I turned over in my sleep. At least I think I was sleeping. It’s always hard to tell when you’re sleeping when you’re half-asleep.

“C’mon with you, I don’t have all night.”

Something small and wispy, like a feather, brushed against my forehead. I turned the other way.

“Juju beans! I don’t have time for this.”

Something large and hard whacked my forehead. I opened my eyes.

“Finally,” said the butterfly-winged elderly woman standing over me. Her long gossamer cloak fluted across my bed. I rubbed my eyes. Thinking of the word fluted hurt my head.

I looked at the Clocky alarm clock on my nightstand. It glared back with a god awfully early hour.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said, “you’re either an undigested potato, too much plum sherry, or Tinkerbell’s mom.

“Great, another comedian. Take a whiff.” She leaned in close to me and pulled my head against her bosom.

“Toothpaste?” I sniffed. “And is that a hint of soggy mint floss caught between braces?”

She nodded and waited. I removed a bit of gossamer fuzz from my cheek, looked back at Clocky, looked back at her bosom, and waited to wake up.

“I’m the Tooth Fairy!” she finally said, flapping her wings in exasperation. “And don’t you use ‘long in the tooth’ in a sentence or I’ll deck you one. It’s bad enough I’ve got people like you gumming up the dreams of the youth of today. Don’t get me started on that stupid Rock movie, either. And do you have any idea how hard it is to keep leaving quarters under pillows in this economy?”

I folded my arms. “Look here, what’s this hallucination about?

“You, you ninny! You crushed Zombos Junior’s heart by telling him I don’t exist.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, thinking back. “You mean yesterday? Can I help it if Zimba kept his pillow-teeth in her drawer? He saw them and asked what gives.”

“Ewww! That’s pretty creepy? Even I don’t keep the teeth."

“What could I say? Then he puts two and two together and it snowballed into no Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. I couldn’t stop it. Childhood ends sometime, right? Bang or whimper, it’s all the same. Why don’t you go and bother those young-adult-supernatural authors who write dark fiction? Hell, times were Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys were as real as you could get. Now it’s sex and murder and mayhem. That’ll put a damper on anyone’s childhood.”

“All right, fine, I will. Name me one.”

“JG Faherty. He wrote Ghosts of Coronado Bay. It’s a Maya Blair mystery story.”

“Tell me about it.” The Tooth Fairy pulled a steno notebook and pencil from a pocket in her cloak, and then sat on the edge of my bed, waiting. I reluctantly pulled myself up more, made my pillows a little more comfortable to rest my back on, and told her about the book.

“Maya Blair’s a young girl with a gift for seeing ghosts. It started with her seeing her dead grandmother, Elsa, who drops by regularly for chitchat. Between high school, working at her parents’ diner, being a virgin and not really liking it all that much, she’s got a lot on her mind. But she’s got morals and scruples in spite of the peer pressure and the machinations of Gavin Hamlin, the evil ghost come back to find a needed key to unleash a dark power. He and the scurvy crew of the Black Lady went down during a terrible storm in 1900 something, but Coronado Bay’s maritime museum pulls up artifacts from the sunken wreck, bringing Hamlin and his evil designs along with them, back to the surface.

“Now Maya not only see’s the ghosts, but she has a weird ability to make them whole again, solid I mean, so they appear like everyone else—except for the clothes, since those are out of date. One of the ship’s crew, Blake Hennessy, is bent on stopping Hamlin from finding what he’s looking for, because he knows Hamlin’s up to no good and a powerful sorcerer to boot. He and Maya eventually hook up, though she’s definitely not Nancy Drew, so it takes her a while to realize Blake’s cold touch is not from anemia.”

The Tooth Fairy looked up. “Not seeing the darkness yet.”

“I’m getting to that. When Hamlin finds out a virgin’s blood can make him solid again—enough to touch and hold onto things—he starts murdering girls for their blood. He learns about Maya’s abilities and how her virgin blood would be like Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982 compared to the Sangria he’s been sampling. The murder scenes are short, brutal, and bloody. Maya has to keep Hamlin at bay, along with the cutthroat crew of the Black Lady, who would love to skinny dip in her blood, too.”

The Tooth Fairy’s eyes widened. “Ooh. How does she stop them?”

“Can’t say. That would ruin the story for you. But, not only does she have to balance fighting evil with avoiding her jocky-jerk ex-boyfriend who tries to manhandle her, with working at the diner when she rather bowl or hang out with friends, and with keeping up with school work, she’s got the hots for Blake and Hamlin—until Hamlin shows his true colors—heating things to frisky-see for her."

"Sounds like she could use some help," said the Tooth Fairy.

"And she gets it. From her close friend Lucy, who's much more loose in the girdle--if you catch my drift-- than Maya, and an unexpected enemy turned friend when needed the most. She's also got a knack for martial arts and knows how to take the ballast out of a sailor's pants with one good kick." 

 "So this writer, JG, does she--."

"--She's a he," I corrected, "but he captures a young girl's challenges in today's world pretty well. Maya's as believable as any high schooler with boys and books and youthful hopes on her mind can be, minus the supernatural gravitas of course.  And JG brings on the gravitas with electrical discharges Hamlin can control to his benefit and the threat of serious physical harm to Maya and her friends. Once the ghosts are around Maya, they can hit, hurt, and kill like any other living thing."

The Tooth Fairy closed her notebook. Tucking it, and the pencil, back in her cloak she said, "All right, then, I'm off to see JG Faherty to get to the bottom of this." In a shimmer of sparkles she was gone.

"Good, give him my regards." I slumped down and slid beneath the covers. The smells of chocolate and hard-boiled eggs made me sniff back to wakefulness. I slowly pulled down the covers from my eyes and looked up. Standing over me was a big furry bunny holding a basket filled with variously colored eggs. He didn't look very happy.

Damnit, Zimba, who keeps pillow-teeth meant for the Tooth Fairy. Now I'll never get to sleep. 

Comic Book Review: The Search for Swamp Thing 1

Zombos Says: Very Good

John Constantine smokes up a storm in the first of 3 issues for The Search for Swamp Thing. With only 20 pages to involve Batman and Zatanna, Jonathan Vankin and Marco Castiello keep Constantine moving before he can suffer from jet lag.

After the Swamp Thing sends a vibe to Constantine by way of the bloke's morning paper (try doing that on an iPad), it's a quick hop and half a pack to the Royal Botanic Gardens to commune more closely with "old lettuce-breath." The greenery takes Constantine's breath away instead, and leaves him with a spreading fungus tatoo for old time sake.

Lazy sot that he is, Constantine hooks up with Batman to do his legwork while a mobster impaled on a tree limb in a Gotham City junkyard may hold more clues as to what's making Daddy Iceburg Lettuce so petulant. In a tender moment of holding hands and frolicking in The Green's etherealness to commune with Swampy, Constantine winds up a few butts short and with a headache only Zatanna can make worse, what with their romance magic all zapped out and all, even with all that cleavage a-burgeoning (it's discretely shirted up for the issue's cover).

The art and story make Constantine a walking chimney of twitty droll wit armed with handy pocket magic spells, and keep this glummy mystery moving along briskly to the capper splash page lead-in for issue 2.

I just hope he can solve it before he finds out how much cigarettes cost here in the States and the page count drops again.

Meet the Author: Paul Bibeau

Paul Bibeau's Sunday's With Vlad is a monsterkid's dream journey, a wild carnival ride, and a sheer delight as Jeffrey Lyons would say. Spend a Sunday or two with Paul and Vlad, or while away a weekday at his Goblin Books blog, or meet him right now...in his own words...near a dark desk.

 

Let me tell you about the dead men hidden in my office.

Twenty years ago when I was a recent graduate from college I took a job as a reporter for a small town newspaper. I lived over the bingo hall of the local Catholic church, I smoked a pack a day of Camels unfiltered, and when the night came over that place and it turned a rich country dark...I went out walking. I talked to vagrants, drug dealers, and cops. I snagged a dinner invitation from a man who'd turned his property into some kind of paramilitary fortress, like he was ready for an attack. The local criminals threatened me because they thought I was an undercover cop. And the real undercover cop, standing nearby and wearing a wire, recorded it all. I saw things and did things I will never forget.

Ten years ago, when I was a magazine writer living in New York City, I took a trip back to the town, took notes, and began writing a novel about my experiences. It was filled with death and crime and sexual perversion, and the sharp-sweet and terrible smell of that paper mill that dominated the whole region. I hated it and I miss it. The novel took three years of my life and went through four drafts. It was a piece of crap.

Seriously. My best friend took me out for drinks and told me how bad it was as gently as he could. I still have some of the rejection letters from agents -- there were more than a hundred. The novel had great parts, but they didn't add up to a great novel. Someone once said you write a good novel twice and a bad novel over and over.  That's exactly right. I am a big proponent of rewriting and editing, but a novel has a window of time in which you can either make it right or fail forever. How many of our life's moments are like that? How many perfect near-misses do you have?

Anyway, now I look at the thing and I see the 20 year-old man I once was, who lived in this world and let it break his heart... and the 30 year-old man who tried to write about it and couldn't. Those men are gone. I can't get them back.

But someday soon, I promise you, friendly reader...I will write the story of a 40 year-old with a stack of paper in a dark desk drawer. He has his secrets and his regrets, and he realizes to make this story right, he will have to solve the mystery at the heart of it -- a murder, actually. But isn't every failed story a bit like a murder? I will write it as boldly as I can, until the old authors come back to me and speak their secrets. I need to do it soon.

My time is running out.