I try to be sociable, but each year that passes, I find it harder and harder to gear up for certain things. For example–and this pains me a little, as I’ve always held a special place for Halloween–adult costume parties seem to have drifted well beyond the grasp of my enthusiasm these days.

Tonight my wife involved us in a costume party/fund raiser for a professional organization to which she belongs. Moping on the inside, I sucked it up for the team and played along. As I might have trusted, we had a lot of fun together.

But I was left feeling astonished and old by the number of 20-something professionals who needed us to explain our costume to them. In fact, I am moved to attempt this public experiment:

The following items are components of the last-minute Halloween costume my wife and I assembled:

Me: Drab gray dress, gray wig in a bun, butcher’s knife
Her: Blood-spattered shower curtain (plus shower cap for visual aid)

With no further hintage, can anybody tell me what we meant to portray?

Restore my faith, dear people of the Internet,

SD

Just back from Baltimore and the best Bouchercon in recent memory (thanks to the heroic efforts of Ruth Jordan, Judy Bobalik, and crew). I’d intended to post a recap, wherein I’d have recounted at least a few of the laughs laughed, good meals eaten, and good times had with many of the terrific folks I’ve met over the past several years, as well as a few new friendly faces.

But I returned home to a sad piece of news that takes me back a little farther, back to an even older group of terrific folks and friends–a group that’s a little bit smaller now than it was when I set out for Baltimore, and left with an exceptional vacancy.

If you happened to have an interest in the horror and/or fantasy genres during the 1990s–particularly in the specialty presses which thrived during that time–you’ve probably seen the wonderful artwork of H.E. Fassl. I have two of Harry’s pieces on my own office wall, and every time I look at them, they bring fond memories of times gone by.

           Chief among those memories are my memories of Harry himself. In retrospect, our paths overlapped only for a relatively short walk, but he let me tag along for a bit while I was finding my own way, and his footprints remain. I think of him ambling along, smoking and grumbling, always a curmudgeon of the very best kind: the kind who needs a spiny shell to carry around such a big sweet incorrigible heart.

Meanwhile, his brain was a crooked, sprawling junkshop of wonderments; for years his cameras gave us lingering glimpses into its nooks and crannies. Each of Harry’s works was a bizarre, disturbing, and yet somehow comforting reminder that the world is boundless as long as the imagination runs wild.

Rest easy, sir.

A reader writes, “I was looking around your website and didn’t find any news about your next book. I was curious, are you currently working on something? And if so, when can we expect your next novel?”

Now this is a perfectly legitimate question. Readers of crime and suspense fiction can expect, from those authors they support, a new book each year or so. My last book came out around this time TWO years ago, and counting, which begs the question, “What the hell does that guy do all day?”

I could get into explanations and excuses, but look, it’s really not important. The point is, there’s a new novel coming. Date:  February 24, 2009 (available in unabridged audio, if you’ve got that habit).  It’s called Safer. The story involves a college professor, a retired cop, an overzealous neighborhood watch program, and a shallow grave.

Here’s a look at the cover, which I think is terrific:

Pretty soon we’ll whip up a dedicated page for the book, but for now, I return to preparations for Bouchercon 2008 in Baltimore, by Team Jordan, the honorable Lawrence Block, Laura Lippman, and John Harvey presiding. If you’re going, I hope to see you there.

credit: Michelle Gallach

If you’re attuned to such information, you’ve probably already heard the news that James Crumley–the hard-nosed, soft-sided, two-fisted, open-armed author/cult icon whose novels are routinely cited by many of today’s top writers in and out of crime fiction circles–has died at age 68 in Missoula, Montana.

I once overheard an exchange between Crumley and a fan. The fan, clearly overwhelmed to be meeting Crumley in his legendary environment–a bar–thanked the man somewhat breathlessly for one of the books he’d written. “Thanks,” Crumley said, gruff yet warm. “It was just as goddamned hard to write as all the others.” Then he patted her on the back of the hand and she floated away.  

If you’ve never read Crumley, look up The Last Good Kiss, or The Wrong Case, and give them a try. Tonight, I plan to sit down with Dancing Bear, which has been too far down my reading stack for too long.

Here we are on publication day for this little slice of awesome:  Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories. I’m very pleased to be part of this book, which is edited by the intrepid John McNally and Owen King, and which is said to contain “irresistable, possibly dangerous levels of spandex and heroism.” All I know is that I received my contributor’s copies a few days ago, and I’m loving what I’m reading so far. Check it out.

 All right, I suppose it’s past time to dust off the old web logging machine and post something.  Fortunately, there are a couple people worth talking about. Let’s begin.

Punisher Max Special:  Little Black Book #1

Good buddy Victor Gischler makes his Marvel Comics debut today, so a little later I’ll be heading up the street to my friendly neighborhood comic shop to grab my copy. Though I’ve never been a proper consumer of comics I appreciate the form, and I’m certainly an avid consumer of Gischler stories, both by the author and about him. So count me in.

Scorch by Marc Paoletti

I first met Marc Paoletti years ago–in 1994, according to copyrights–when we were both published in a paperback anthology of horror short stories called Young Blood. Half the stories in this book were reprints of early works written by celebrated masters of the genre, the other half original stories from punks like me and Marc and assorted other reprobates.

I always got a kick out of Marc’s story in that book, and out of Marc himself. In fact, some years later, I stole one of his anecdotes (from his days as a Hollywood pyrotechnician) and based a character around it in my second novel.

I now learn that Marc has 400 novels coming out in the next 12 months, the first of which is Scorch, which stars a Hollywood pyrotechnician, and which is getting some great press so far.

My copy arrived today, and I can’t wait to dive in. Check it out for yourself. . . .

Blogjacker: Anthony Neil Smith

Last Stop: Gischler’s Blogpocalypse

It’s the trip through Missouri that gets to you–cheaper gas and long stretches of prairies interrupted by billboards advertising more adult bookstores than anywhere else I’ve ever seen. 

But once past that, we head into Omaha to find Sean Doolittle carrying his laptop (he’s got a deadline to meet), a Tom Waits CD, and wearing pitch-dark sunglasses.  Golf clubs are slung on his back like too many samurai swords.  At his feet, a whole cooler full of Fat Tire beer.

Doolittle is the professional.  I mean, he’s the guy who takes his time, crafts each draft immaculately in his head before getting it on the page.  Each book gets sharper, clearer, like morphing from a damned good color TV into a big-ass High-Def Plasma.  He’s also willing to take risks–if the book demands to go in a particular direction, Doolittle trusts that the characters know what they’re doing, even when they’re screwing it all up.  Go back and take a look at Dirt and Burn.  Compare those to Rain Dogs and (my favorite) The Cleanup.  You see?  He’s like a documentary filmmaker, most interested in letting these characters spill their own stories in their own way.  Same thing goes for Safer coming next year.  The characters in that one could be living right next door to you.  Hell, they could be you.

Maybe it’s hanging around Doolittle on the links and at backwoods catfish restaurants that rubbed off on me, but I think that if you enjoy taking trips to visit the people Sean thought up, you’d also be up for spending a weekend or so with Billy Lafitte from Yellow Medicine.  I mean, for a bad cop he’s not a bad guy, really.  Just a negligent and regretful father, a self-loathing prick, and a consummate manipulator, but if you’re on his good side he’s going to fight for you, no questions asked.  And he fights dirty, so you’ll win.  But at what cost?  If you think it’s worth finding out, give it a shot on May 12 from Barnes & Noble (if you can’t make it to those cool awesome indie shops, I mean)

As Doolittle adds his clubs to the bed of Big Red and climbs into the backseat, we all realize we might have to dump the truck and rent a Hummer.  But that can wait until morning.  Right now, we’ve got to find a cheap motel when the last of us is too tired to drive anymore.  Tomorrow, we’re going all the way to Philly first to pick up the near-legendary pulp-hack comic book genius Duane Swierczynski.

Driving Time: Google Maps says about 19 hours…but they’re never right.

Tune for this leg: “Rain Dogs” by Tom Waits.

A couple weeks ago, for family movie night, I rented, on various recommendations, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. It turns out that this film is packed to the rafters with weirdness and wonderment. I’ll be honest:  some of the imagery and some of the action was unsettling enough at first that my wife and I both wondered if I’d gotten us in over our heads. But I find that two weeks later I’m still caught up in the adventures of Chihiro and Haku and pals.

My advice to other parents:  if your kids are almost seven and almost three and have not been raised on an anime diet, they may be frightened on first viewing (my son didn’t respond well to the Stink Spirit sequence; my daughter was disturbed and agitated by the boy-in-dragon-form-is-mortally-injured scenes; your mileage may vary). In fact, I worried at times about the possibility of nightmares and/or permanent trauma. But they slept like an almost-seven and almost-three year-old, and in the morning, they both wanted to watch it again.

Look here, crime fans:  Plots With Guns is back in black and badder than ever.

Our wires report that the first issue of the much anticipated re-launch of this seminal online crime fiction journal is now open for business, featuring short fiction from Greg Bardsley, Stephen Blackmoore, Tim Maleeny, Kieran Shea, Matthew Louis, William Boyle, Jeremiah Granden, and Justin Porter, all brought to you under the steely-eyed stewardship of editor Anthony Neil Smith. Check it out.

Until nine days ago, my home state of Nebraska retained the distinction of being the last state in the union to offer the electric chair as its only method of capital punishment. Some Nebraskans considered this a dubious distinction, and some considered it a point of pride.

While I’m not necessarily interested in joining the argument, I’m reminded of an  experience I had in college. This was in 1994, the night the State of Nebraska electrocuted Harold Lamont “Walkin’ Wili” Otey. Otey’s was the first such event since Charles Starkweather’s execution in 1959, and the unexpected turnout–a strange hybrid of protest and carnival–led state officials to conclude that midnight executions, all in all, were probably a bad idea.

 Anyway, I was there. A few days later, I wrote a short story about it. This story was published a couple years later in Issue #1 of a small horror magazine edited by Paula Guran. For reasons of both craft and perspective it’s a bit painful to look back on this story now, as looking at early work so often is.

But just for nostalgia, I’ll do something I generally don’t do and pull this old manuscript into the Internet age. So if, for whatever reason, you’re interested in the earnest, slightly pretentious, ethically uncertain writings of a college English major still searching for his voice as a writer, here you are:

 die.pdf

I must have tinkered with this at some point, because the manuscript appears to differ slightly from the published version. Beyond that, two things jump out at me now:

There’s a narrative technique in here that I ended up using, in slightly variant form, in my upcoming novel, Safer (now scheduled for Winter ’09). Though when I wrote this book, I wasn’t consciously aware of having used the technique before.

Also in Safer, I decided to use a quote from an old psychology textbook that I’ve had on my bulletin board for years. I thought, “It’s about time I used this somewhere.” And it seemed to fit the purpose at hand. 

Lo and behold, looking at this short story nearly 14 years after writing it, I discover that I did use this quote before. . .

. . .confirming what I’ve grown to believe as a writer, which is that I don’t always know as much about what I’m doing as I think I do.