Black Infinity 2

I've often spoken of my childhood spent in an enchanted cottage located between deep woods and vast lake, and of the healthy diet of creature double features and classic SF television I grew up on. Last summer, I sold the first of several short stories and novellas to Black Infinity, published by the fine folks at Dead Letter Press. "The Tree Surgeon" -- which I'd penned during my unforgettable time at Christine Woodside's Writing From Nature retreat and workshop -- is an homage to my late, great grandfather, Wallace Runge. In my youth, my mother regaled me with amazing stories that fed my young imagination, including the fact that Grampy Wally had been a tree surgeon in his earlier years. I doubt he ever encountered a tree anything like the one my main character does; I sent out the story and it was accepted on its maiden voyage into Black Infinity 2's special "Blobs, Globs, Slime and Spores" issue by publisher Tom English. Contributor copies arrived on a recent snowy Friday afternoon, and they were, frankly, stunning, the oversize pages filled with classic reprints, stories by new master writers like the brilliant Kurt Newton, comics, movie reviews, and a foreword by English referencing some of my all-time favorite TV series and movies: Space:1999, Lost in Space, and the ultra-creepiest of creature features, Attack of the Mushroom People -- when that film ran on Saturday afternoons, I refused to go outside afterward, too terrified to consider playing in those green forest wilds.

Reading an issue of Black Infinity is like a trip through time back to my boyhood; to bigger worlds and universes. It was my pleasure to sit down with publisher Tom English to discuss the publication, and the deep love behind its production.

Talk about the 'vibe' if you would -- the wonderful retro tone of BLACK INFINITY and your own taste regarding a time when, even if it was dark, SF was fun.
Well, I grew up in the late sixties and early seventies -- a wonderful time, I think, for TV, comics, and old SF magazines. The Silver Age of comics was coming to an end, but the local thrift stores were stocked with back issues of books originally published in the 50s. Kids were able to pick up old copies of Mystery in Space, Amazing Fantasy and, occasionally, EC’s Weird Science. There were also plenty of dog-eared copies of old SF digests, like Astounding SF, Fantastic, and Imaginative Tales, to name a few. That’s what I was reading. Meanwhile, broadcast TV was awash with the first waves of syndication of some classic (and groundbreaking) SF shows, namely The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. And on weeknights Chiller Theater (or some variation) was airing movies such as Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World and It Came From Outer Space. For the most part, all these movies, shows, comics and books shared common themes: alien worlds aren’t always welcoming, science isn’t always your friend, and space can hold its share of horrors. This is the kind of stuff that hooked me as a kid. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a good haunted house story, for example? Or the creepy SF equivalent, a creepy derelict spaceship? But the SF genre was shifting. Space travel, as depicted in movies and TV, was becoming routine and a little dull; science always had the right answers; and aliens were just misunderstood. Okay, there’s nothing wrong with this overly optimistic take. I’m certainly not a doom-and-gloom guy, but I missed the sense of foreboding, the moody eeriness, and ... the monstrous creatures. I think the genre is returning to much of this. I think movies like the original Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing started this return. But I wanted to do a magazine that fully embraced this type of SF, and which celebrated all the comics and movies and books and shows that helped shape spooky SF. Hence, the birth of Black Infinity, an idea I’ve had for almost a decade. Issue #1 explores the most obvious theme: Deadly Planets. Issue #2 features “Blobs, Globs, Slime and Spores” (which frequently menace humankind in SF). For each issue I tried to pull together the classic stories featuring the theme or element, added fresh takes by some of today’s best writers, threw in columns on weird science and retro movie reviews, and tied everything together with an introductory overview of each theme. Oh yeah, and lots of movie photos and illustrations. Is Black Infinity for everyone? I seriously doubt it. Does everybody like everything? But my hope is that, for those of us who fondly remember 1950s Sci-fi movies and stories, Black Infinity will be a lazy Saturday afternoon must-read.

Can you share themes for upcoming issues, and also the fantastic classic tales you'll be reprinting?

I’m working on #3 at the moment. The theme is Body Snatchers: alien control/alien possession/alien replacement. John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” is among the classics scheduled, with new stories by (so far) Douglas Smith, Scath Beorh, Kurt Newton and a guy named Gregory Norris.Issue #4 is being planned also. Theme is Strange Dimensions. Future issues will feature Rogue Robots, Derelicts in Space, Cosmic Canines and.... Well, big plans.

I had a great chat with Kurt Newton, and we both pretty much made it a love letter to working with you and BLACK INFINITY. You treat your authors well, Tom English. Why is that important?

I don’t really think I’m doing anything any other good editor wouldn’t do. But several things influence me. First, I love books and I put that love into all my projects. Second, I’m a writer, too. And I abide by The Golden Rule: I treat my writers the way I hope to be treated, and present their stories with as much care as I’d want for my own tales.I feel, for the most part, writers are under-appreciated. What writers do is magical. It’s hard work. It’s lonely work. And I try to do my part to facilitate their efforts.

What do you want today's readers to know about the publication?

Simple mathematics. I put a lot of time and money, sweat and inspiration into every issue. I try to make the magazine fun and cool and entertaining, nostalgic and thought-provoking -- without being offensive or preachy. But I can only do this as long as people buy the magazine. I’m a small, independent press trying to maintain a foothold in the market. So if you want a good read, or if you need to give a gift to someone who loves SF, support Black Infinity by purchasing a copy. Leave a review or just tell a friend. You’ll have my sincerest thanks -- and I can continue to provide an attractive forum for talented writers. 

Two September Writing Adventures

(aboard the ferry, passing the Portsmouth Harbor lighthouse)

This has been an amazing, adventurous 2016! As of this morning, I've completed 52 individual fiction projects (one novel, a dozen novellas among them), and have traveled far and wide (including to Hollywood, where I attended and received Honorable Mention for my short story "Mandered" in The Roswell Awards). In September -- in addition to getting married -- I enjoyed not one but two productive writing retreats. Both featured returns to destinations I've visited and loved before.

The first took me across the Atlantic to the Isles of Shoals. I enjoyed Dale Finley Slongwhite's wonderful Writelines conference to Star Island once before, in 2012. This time around, Hurricane Hermine had different plans for us, and made the sea so choppy that the Coast Guard grounded ferry service for the first two days of our visit. Hermine be damned, Dale had us gather in a hotel nearby the ferry's launch, and, while we labored over daily updates, we kicked off the workshop in the hotel's meeting room. I loved my last time in Dale's classroom, which was and is filled with fantastic writing exercises designed to challenge and inspire (they did!). I completed a short Viking-themed speculative story our second morning in the hotel and began work on a mystery feature film screenplay (by the end of the island adventure, I had the first full third down). We dined at local restaurants and waited. Early Wednesday morning, we got the news that, long last, we'd be on our way to the island. The voyage across the ocean was exhilarating, inspiring. At one point, the islands surfaced from the endless expanse of gray, and we were there. My room this time around was in the actual hotel and not the outbuildings, and came with the rarest of rare: two plugs. They'd added WiFi since my previous visit and, while checking emails during breaks from the writing workshop, I learned I'd been invited to submit a mystery and a western to two different editors.

The food was great, the company stellar. I dig Dale's boot camp-style approach and left the island two days later with plenty of fresh material -- and two new stories, the first of which I penned the very next morning following my return home to Xanadu.

Two autumns ago, our writers' group attended a long weekend retreat to the Waterfall House, a beautiful antique mansard colonial perched atop roaring falls in Stark, New Hampshire. We returned at the end of this September to the house, which was as charming as I recalled. Our first night there, five of us enjoyed an incredible feast of homemade dips, sauces, and jams with cheese and crackers, coconut macaroons, and bakery brownies. For our second night, I slow-roasted a ten and a half pound prime rib from the local butcher shop, and it was incredible! On our third night at the Waterfall House, we enjoyed homemade spinach lasagna and meatballs, salad, and a variety of desserts.

From the moment we landed, I uncapped my pen, poured hazelnut coffee or raspberry seltzer, and wrote. My intention for the weekend was to return home with a briefcase filled with completed manuscripts, and I did -- some 15,000 words between four projects, along with busy work on others. I penned my oldest incomplete project, the novella "Destiny", to THE END, along with two shorts and a longer mystery story, "The Eleven O'Clock Ice Kill." Our weather, though mostly overcast, didn't stop retreaters from taking walks or working outside on the deck overlooking the falls, and, though I left creatively depleted, I accomplished all I hoped for.

In three days I depart for my sixth and final road trip adventure of 2016 -- to When Words Count in Vermont for four days and three nights. I'm bringing a novel, the mystery screenplay, and a handful of short stories to work on. It's been a fantastic year! And 2017 seems poised to begin on a similar high note: while luxuriating last weekend at the Waterfall House, I was approached to pen a novelization of a made-for-TV movie from its screenplay. I've said yes!

BEHOLD: IT'S A GRIMM LIFE

At the end of summer in 2013, I took a long weekend to nest, write, and recover -- I'd had surgery, uprooted my family after buying a house far from all that was familiar, and we'd lost one of our clan, the famous rescue cat Chicken, whose passing left us all feeling as though our hearts had been ripped out of our chests.  During those Three Days of Heaven in Xanadu, I sipped coffee, took walks, read books, and wrote like a dervish. One of the stories completed during the surge was a modern, creepy retelling of the classic Grimm's fable, "Thumbling".  The gist of that particular tale involves a childless couple who wish themselves into having a baby -- a tiny child that rides around in the ear of their horse, among its other adventures.  I'd always found this fable unnerving, and already had put down a page or so about a woman who is part of a circle of social knitters who finds herself mired in shadows after one of the group announces that she and her husband are expecting a baby. The first draft of "Thumbling" dashed itself off over the course of the weekend, completed on my sun porch, a place that has become my al fresco office during the five months of the year when our new town isn't frozen solid and a vast, white wasteland. This past summer, the story's longhand draft came out of the file cabinet and was edited on my laptop during a spectacular August weekend visit from my good friends, those literary geniuses, the Sisters Dent -- I'd read a call for spooky, modern takes on the classics by the fine folks at Tacitus Publishing. I sent off "Thumbling" and, on its first time out, Editor James S. Austin (who also created the amazing cover and interior art) accepted it into the project, the wonderful It's a Grimm Life.

"As a small publisher looking for the proper start, I felt the need to launch a project that embodies Tacitus Publishing's desire to promote writing and writers.  Anthologies are one of the best opportunities for writers, both practiced and new, to get a piece published.  They give a writer the chance to explore new concepts and experiment with a different voice while not having to feel the pressure of writing a story that must appeal to a broad audience," says Austin.  "I have always been fascinated by the assorted stories from past cultures, especially the Grimms’ collection of fairy tales.  It was during my college studies in anthropology, which included an examination of folklore and oral traditions, when I came to appreciate their influence on the literary world.  Their simple but moralistic plot-threads are still alive in popular film and television today.  It’s a Grimm Life offers the reader a chance to once again enter these past fables but through a new perspective and in a modern setting."

Many of my fellow It's A Grimm Life authors shared the back-stories behind their stories.

E.M. Eastick on "Fiddler's Green":  "My house is full of musical instruments: a piano; a guitar; an accordion and clarinet, neither of which I can play with any elegance; a variety of whistles, and a funny-looking mini-violin made from chunky wood and screechy strings, which I purchased on the streets of Katmandu just to stop the guy from playing it in my ear (an effective marketing strategy, it would seem). It's not surprising, then, that I should choose the Grimms' fairy tale about a singing bone for my modern-day retelling. The character of Stephen and his tragic pursuit of greatness were inspired by my mother: whenever I got to thinking I was the universal champion of [fill in the activity], my mother would gently remind me, 'No matter how good you are at something, there will always be someone in the world who's better.' Tough love, perhaps, but, so far, it's managed to keep me grounded and out of prison."

Jessamy Corob Cook on "The Wicked Stepmother":  "When the Disney film Tangled came out my roommate at the time admitted she didn't know the Grimm's version of ‘Rapunzel.’ Shocking! I set out to do my bit for humanity -- I found the story online and read it aloud to her. As I read I realized that what made this such a dark and unsettling story was not the prince getting his eyes scratched out (though Disney did leave that out of Tangled) but the fact that all the witch's evil deeds have love at their core. She can't bear to see Rapunzel grow up and become a woman, and will do anything to keep that from happening. She wants Rapunzel all to herself -- even though Rapunzel was not her daughter to begin with. Part of why I love fairy tales is because they are able to pierce the darkest depths of human experiences, including the dark side of love, and specifically, in this case, motherly love. For the record I think Tangled is great, but it's only one of infinite possible retellings of this story: as is the Grimm's story; as is mine."

(James Austin's original artwork for my story, "Thumbling")

Richard Tasonmart on "Where the Damned Go":  "I had the pleasure of working in a bookshop once.  It was a nice job, until the man with the French horn started coming along every lunch time and made three hours of every working day a living, brassy hell. He started to gather small crowds, this man. Most of them weren't loving his take on 'Wonderwall' and "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain' -- they were just amazed by his nerve. Some workers in an office above where French Horn Man liked to play complained to the local press about his music disturbing their work.  A legend was born.  Soon his crowds were huge.  Everyone wanted to come and see this nuisance in the flesh.  I watched from a window of the bookshop.  Being the horror-loving man that I am, I imagined the whole town coming to see him, jeering and telling him to shut up.  Only then he'd turn into a dragon, and incinerate them with his breath, or take them all into his giant jaws and gulp them down before moving on to the next miserable place.  Of course, in this scenario I was immune, and watched the whole thing from inside the bookshop, horrified.  The reason I was immune was because I wouldn't be able to hear the horn for some reason.  This was the first spark of 'Where the Damned Go'.  Afterwards, it was simply a matter of determining where my Hamelin was, and what debt had to be paid.  As a writer who always follows his sparks, I find myself more often than not contemplating my Hamelins and my debts.  Work these out, and I usually have a story."

Adrean Messmer on "Waxwing":  "I’ve always loved the Juniper Tree. It was the first of the Grimm stories to make me realize that fairy tales were not exactly intended for children. From the stepmother trying to pin the death on her daughter, to feeding the murdered child to his own father for dinner, there was some twisted stuff going on. It’s such an overlooked story and super creepy. I’d been playing around with the retelling for a while. I wanted to keep it just as disturbing without rehashing the same plot elements. And I wanted to focus on some of the issues that people face today. Self-mutilation, suicide, child abuse, and zombie birds. You know, just every day kind of stuff."

Zoe McAuley on "Fairy Tale Endings":  "For me, putting things in a modern setting implies facing up to the real consequences of the events in the story, rather than glossing over them. With fairy tales, it's not really necessary to put a dark spin on them -- they're pretty damned dark already if you take a clear look at them. I got thinking about how fairy tales would play out in the real world and quickly concluded that they'd result in some pretty messed-up kids. I wanted to showcase how these kids might end up, the damage done to them -- the trouble was in cutting the number of examples down to a snappy story! But three is always a good fairy tale number. I didn't have the ending when I started; that just clicked partway through writing. It was irresistibly circular."

Victor Hyde on "Kurt & Wolfgang's Final Show":  "I grew up in a small town where people who were nobodies took on quasi-celebrity status: an estate agent, a butcher, a hairdresser that worked in Johannesburg for a month.  One such person was an old man with a hand puppet. He made the rounds at most birthday parties and functions for children with an old hand puppet of a dead-faced boy with wide eyes and a nutcracker’s mouth. Everyone knew of him but nobody really knew him.  His audience was limited to children younger than six. From the faded clothes and rusted car it was clear that these gigs barely paid enough to keep him alive. One day he did not pitch up for a children’s party and a few days later he was found dead in his flat. The flat was home to two hundred hand puppets, some brand new, others ancient, that the old man had surrounded himself with. Yet he only ever used the one puppet. To me there is something of a sad insanity to the story. When It’s a Grimm Life came along, the memory jumped the queue and demanded attention. Kurt and Wolfgang’s Final Show is my answer."

(Tacitus Publisher James. S. Austin)

Carmen Tudor on "Cast Me Adrift on Birdsong and Ash":  "As an Aussie, it can be difficult to sell a non-American setting to an American publisher, and yet those are my favorites; endless Californian or Texan settings don’t really do it for me. My story ‘Cast Me Adrift on Birdsong and Ash’ is set in a small fishing village on the Kent coast. It’s not Dickens’s marshes of Great Expectations, or even anywhere near Australia, but that novel definitely pushed my story in a particular direction. Adding my love of Grimm’s fairytales was an easy addition and the tale of ‘The Fisherman and His Wife’ slotted in alongside the gray skies and smoky chimneys quite nicely. As with most Grimm tales, the endings don’t always inspire happy thoughts. I’m quite fond of letting the reader decide if a story is meant to be as macabre as it seems on first reading, and ‘Cast Me Adrift on Birdsong and Ash’ is no different. Have a read. Let your imagination take you away from California and the American Dream. Bundle up against the cold, salty sea air and take a ride with a talking fish. And if Grimms-style endings don’t work for you, feel free to use your imagination. The fish won’t mind."

Charie D. La Marr on "Snaps":  "‘Snaps’ is a story that is very close to my heart. I started it twenty-eight years ago when I was the new mom of a son named Travis -- on a very boring extended maternity leave. (It was a planned pregnancy!) I had just gotten my first computer, a state-of-the-art Leading Edge and I was using it to write newsletters for my mother’s travel agency. I have been writing stories since I was about six and I decided it was time to learn how to really use the computer to start writing fiction. Somewhere in my former office in the basement in my huge Steelcase desk is the original story on one of those 5-inch floppy discs. Of course I have no way to read that disc so I had to start over. It kind of sat in the back of my head for about twenty-seven years before I finally wrote it again. Yes, I actually counted snaps on more than one occasion. I have a little OCD in me. Okay, a lot. And the numbers in the story were the result of my research. It’s probably a lot different now with onesies and Velcro and stuff like that. But I was a ‘green’ mother who raised my son in cloth diapers and that meant old-fashioned rubber pants. More snaps.  I call this story a dark cyberpunk fairy tale because of the computer connection. Oddly, or maybe not, Travis grew up to be a computer genius before he was seven. When I originally sent the story to James, he suggested I increase the age of the computer genius upstairs. I did, but it gave me a chuckle. Because the original fifth grade genius and hacker actually lives with me. I guess it’s unusual, but in our house it was just normal. Add to that my love of offbeat fairy tales. Growing up, there was only one cartoon show I would watch and that was Rocky and Bullwinkle. And ‘Fractured Fairy Tales’ always cracked me up. I still have a stuffed Fractured Fairy on my bed. The original versions of the Grimm’s tales are just so bad-ass that it is fun to mix them up. And I just loved writing about that little twerp with the bad wardrobe. To me he is pure fairy tale."

Liz Crossland on "Black Rock":  "‘What if’ scenarios can lead to interesting stories. ‘Black Rock’ came out of an MA writing assignment where we were challenged to think of a modern twist on a fairy tale. The character of Rapunzel, hair tumbling down from the highest tower, was worthy of subversion: what if Rapunzel was not so innocent? What if she metaphorically let down her hair?  What if her hair was a weapon, as well as a means of liberation? I set the story in northern England where schoolgirl ‘Rapunzel’ is trapped in a damaging relationship. A strict word limit led to my idea of Rapunzel tweeting for help. So when I heard Tacitus Publishing was commissioning a Grimm anthology, I returned to my manuscript, eager to expand on the plot.  If you’ve ever visited the North Yorkshire moors, you may recognise the isolated setting of the story. Wander the Victorian streets of Whitby and you’ll see shop windows full of jet-black jewellery. The semi-precious stone Whitby Jet is a recurring image in ‘Black Rock’ and, for me, this symbolises the dark heart of the story: the flaws in the disfigured ‘Prince’, the elusive heroine and the obsession she has with her dark motorbike-riding knight."

October 2014 Writing Retreat to Maine

(Writing on the big porch)

It was the writing getaway that almost wasn't.  Four days before I was set to depart for the autumn retreat to my Southern New Hampshire group's venue, a friend's wonderful and welcoming house in the town of Rangeley, Maine, I got socked by a miserable illness.  As Thursday approached, it became clear I wouldn't be able to attend.  I was beyond disappointed.  My good pal Douglas Poirier -- one of those upcoming names in literature to keep watching -- called and said he wouldn't be heading up until Friday, and if I felt better, he'd be driving right past my house.  I don't medicate apart from aspirin and melatonin, but I choked down copious amounts of the over-the-counter pink stuff, and on that bright October Friday morning, I woke feeling infinitely better. I was a day late, but I ultimately made it to the retreat.

Normally, I'm meticulous about these grand events.  I have my bags packed well in advance, have mapped out the projects I want to work on, and leave nothing to chance.  But this time, with my attendance pushed back to the Eleventh Hour, clothes got tossed into my overnight bag at the last second, and I decided I would write whatever called to me once we landed, no preconceived expectations.  After paying the mortgage and shopping locally for Friday night dinner (I was asked to cook the Thursday night welcome meal but was, on Thursday night, in bed feeling lousy), I hopped in Doug's car, and we drove steadily north through the mountain landscape.  The foliage was stunning, and our conversations on the writing life beyond inspiring.

We arrived and, after greeting my fellow scribes, I camped on a rocker and began work on "Hibernation", a novella that has haunted me since the previous winter.  The fresh pages flowed fairly quickly, and I stopped only to make a luscious dip for chips and vegetables.  Then I capped my pen and cooked dinner for the gang -- a massive boneless pork roast, mashed potatoes, salad, and apple sauce.  While dinner simmered, I snuck in a few more pages, sipped raspberry-lime seltzer, brewed a pot of coffee, and luxuriated in that rocker beneath a maple tree dressed in a cloak of bright pumpkin-orange leaves.

(Group photo, minus Doug)

Our hostess, the wonderful Melissa Gates (another of those exciting new voices to be on the lookout for -- Melissa's just had a publisher request her first novel), has graciously opened her home to members of the Southern N. H. group as well as those in our group up here in the Great North Country now three times over the past eighteen months.  We've seen all manner of the wild and unexpected, including a violent microburst (a kind of localized tornado) that knocked all the rockers off the porch and blew a massive barbecue grill across the yard during the first retreat.  This trip had its plot twists, too -- not limited to my medical travails, which appeared to clear up right in time for the bulk of the weekend stay.  But as I settled down for that first night's dinner with my fellow scribes, a sense of happiness embraced me and I caught myself smiling on numerous occasions.  I slept like a corpse in one of the bedrooms upstairs, and got writing again the next morning after a big breakfast.

For lunch, it was suggested we take a walk to the local barbecue restaurant down the road.  My lunch consisted of an amazing apple cider-brined brisket, fries, and a kale/Brussels sprout slaw.  After we stuffed ourselves, we moseyed down to Rangeley Lake.  A moody gray mist hung over the surrounding mountains, and the foliage seemed to glow against the gloom.  We returned to the retreat house, wrote, and I grabbed a quick afternoon nap while the night's dinner slow-cooked: boneless lamb and vegetables.  Now, I'm not the biggest fan of lamb, but it was beyond delicious and added that proper decadent note to our last big meal of the weekend.

(Saturday afternoon on the lake)

Dessert was a giant German chocolate cake from the famous bakery near where we used to live before we bought Xanadu and moved so far north.  A chocolate disk at the center of the cake bore a single word in German: Schriftsteller -- 'Writer'.  The cake was beyond delicious.  We enjoyed our second reading of the weekend (during which, Melissa gave me a manicure; sadly, no photographs exist of that hilarious and decadent moment).  I returned to my room and again slept soundly. Sunday morning broke gray and melancholy, because it meant the weekend had ended. After breakfast at a restaurant in the downtown, we took our big group photo and began to depart for home. Still, as I returned to family and Writing Room (and some nifty snail mail, including a contributor copy containing my story "Calliope") my inner voice reminded me how grateful I was to have made it to Maine.  I can't wait to be back within that house's inspiring geometry again!  Possibly in April, we've been told.

"Princess and the Bee" published in LOVECRAFT eZINE

On a brisk October day in 2012, I found myself racing around our then-apartment.  My bags were packed and I was due to head north to Vermont, to a weekend stay I'd won at When Words Count Writers' Retreat.  The retreat wasn't the reason for the madness -- an editor had requested a short story from me mashing up Lovecraftian lore and classic fairy tales.  Earlier in the summer, I'd dreamed up such an odd hybrid, mixing "The Princess and the Pea" into the dark, terrifying abyss that Howard Philip Lovecraft so often gazed into (and, it can be believed, found himself being gazed back from).  The story sat mostly composed in longhand draft on my desk and was also put up to a point on my laptop.  Said editor needed the story that day, retreat or not.

We jumped in the car and drove steadily north, stopping in the town of Lebanon, New Hampshire for lunch and to restock engine coolant.  By then, my longhand draft was completed in the car.  After a harrowing circle around a steep Vermont mountain (not the first time online directions have attempted to kill us in our car), I landed at the retreat center, edited the rest of my draft on my laptop up in my room, and hit 'send.'  After two rewrites, the editor ultimately rejected the story.  It sat in my inventory while I bought a house, moved, and worked on numerous other deadlines, and then went out again to the fine folks at Lovecraft eZine, who sent along a fantastic acceptance.  "Princess and the Bee" has just been published in Issue #32, and can be read here.  My short story about a young girl forced to battle bullies and worse within the unsympathetic walls of Arkham Orphanage as the world spirals toward its end shares space with several other notable authors (including the inimitable W. H. Pugmire), and has since garnered impressive reader feedback.

I look fondly back on that frenetic October Sunday, and an adventure built around the completion and editing of a story that was a good deal of fun to write.  And I'm beyond thrilled to have seen the story published in such a fantastic -- and humbling -- venue.  It's a credit I'm proud to claim as my own, with a weird little story about a heroic girl that has boosted my readership.

The story's appearance has also sent me back to those wonderful old dog-eared paperbacks to enjoy Lovecraft's work, at the perfect time of the year.  And I've already penned a new submission, which I'll be sending to the editing team at Lovecraft eZine to consider.

Radio Nights

For the eighth time in my career, I recently took to the airwaves, this time as the special guest on the fantastic Ghostman and Demon Hunter show. Ghostman and Demon Hunter broadcast across a platform that includes 102.7 FM (live) and various venues after the fact.  I went on at just after 8 p.m. EST on Sunday, July 13, a night renown for some fairly bad weather between New York City and New Hampshire.

Ghostman and Demon Hunter (aka the brilliant Shaun Burris and Nathan Drake Schoonover) welcomed me on board to talk about the writing life and my latest literary adventures on a night that grew so humid, it was like walking through neck-deep water.  By afternoon, the sky had darkened to the consistency of dusk, and an apocalyptic rain hammered our fair mountain town.  By eight, I'd closed the windows and turned off the ceiling fan in my Writing Room, so as not to create any noisy feedback when the hosts dialed me in (as stated, I'm old hat at this whole radio coolness!).  Sans fan, the temperature in my home office skyrocketed, and sweat poured. Unseen, mercifully, to listeners, I looked like a refugee from a sauna!

At the other end of the line, massive thunderheads did their best to unleash havoc on the hosts, who put on an impressive weekly broadcast -- my predecessor the previous Sunday was none other than Svengoolie, whose monster movie fest on MeTV is beloved and required Saturday night viewing in our home. With lightning bolts attempting to deafen and frazzle, we discussed the skill of pitching ideas to TV, my work on Star Trek: Voyager, my books like the forthcoming Bugs!, The Q Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse, among others.

(at 94.7 FM's studios in January 2013)

We talked the new feature film I wrote, Brutal Colors (presently in post-production), and my love of creature features -- those wonderful classic monster movies I grew up on, and still often play in the background when I write. And robots, another beloved theme getting plenty of play in my career these past few months. Then, which is always the case when I've taken to the airwaves, I blinked and it was over, the thirty minutes passing with the speed of what felt like seconds. Ghostman and Demon Hunter were gracious hosts and thanked me for my time, promising we'd do it all again somewhere down the road.

When I was a teenager and had freshly discovered this whole writing thing, I listened to the radio at night on a boxy cube console with a record player on top located at the side of my bed. While waiting for my favorite songs to come on, I also looked forward to hearing my favorite radio hosts, who fed my imagination and helped me dream some of the biggest story lines of my life as a result of those nightly soundtracks.  So being on the radio -- three times in 2013 on the stellar 94.7 show hosted by Rob Azevedo, Granite State of Mind, once so far in '14 -- is always a treat, and a reminder of my humble beginnings.  I can't wait for Number Nine!

Freedom!

I've been writing full-time since 1996. Throughout, I've done long stints as feature writer and columnist (fifteen years writing sports/adventure and celebrity articles for the late, great Heartland USA Magazine, among others), notched TV writing gigs, and I've sold novels, short story collections, novellas, and a plethora of short stories, both here and abroad.  After waking up each morning, I quickly mosey to the coffee pot, then vanish into my Writing Room, where I court the Muse.  I live a literary lifestyle that isn't second nature so much as first. Involuntary, like breathing.  I'm prolific. But while deep in a couple of projects that include a new contracted feature film screenplay and a collection of novellas all centered around robots, I started feeling the fatigue that sometimes dogs me. I needed to catch my breath.

So I woke on a humid June Monday and decided that instead of 'working', I needed to play a little. The previous Sunday, I'd read an enjoyable article on Free Writing, the act of putting pen to page or fingers to keyboard and giving yourself permission to just compose, knowing the results are usually fairly bad and unusable.  The goal is to write without worrying about grammar or making corrections, to get out all the sludge that's in the writer's head so he can move on to the work that matters.  It's a time-honored tradition lauded by such notables as Natalie Goldberg and, after a fashion, Julia Cameron, who extols the writing of 'morning pages'.  The article I'd read suggested a few different approaches to Free Writing, like making word lists and jotting down disparate story prompts, and creating a story from the puzzle pieces.

What I decided to do instead was point my finger at my list of as-yet-unwritten story ideas -- which a few new concepts had been added to, not really fully-formed ideas, not yet -- and dive in, no pressure, no expectations. Within the first two hours, I'd written an entire draft for "Crucifix", based upon one of those concepts without an actual story that had dogged me for months.  After a short break and a walk around our yard, I again put pen to blank page and wrote, in one sitting, "Skylight", another of those concepts, based upon the big skylights in the elegant conference room where my Tuesday Night Writers' group meets.  From the first gathering, I'd wanted to pen a story about the skylight directly over where I sit, and I knew I wanted it to end with the main character gazing up, aware something up there was staring down.  The next day, a Tuesday, I started work on a third quietly creepy concept, and soon had nearly 3,000 words of "Vera's New Teeth".  On Wednesday, the first draft was done.  After that, my science fiction parable "Third World" followed.  A Western, "The Cowboy and the Dandy", was completed by Sunday.  Over the course of six days in June, I penned five short stories, totaling some 11,000 words.  One of the stories has already sold. The others were read aloud to group in their raw drafts, and garnered plenty of positive feedback and love.  They'll all eventually make their way onto the computer for submission as markets appear and time permits. I'm beyond pleased with the results.

So don't be afraid to give Free Writing a try.  Above all else, my week of Free Writing was fun -- a reminder that sometimes writers need to clock out from a set schedule and just play.

The Bold and the Beautiful

I've always been a diehard Alphabet Network soap viewer (until those schmucks went ahead and cancelled All My Children and my favorite, the superb One Life to Live), so forgive the title of this post.  It seemed appropriate for a shout out for the latest release from Firbolg Publishing, Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, which contains my short story "Every Seven Years, Give or Take." I was honored to be part of this anthology, which boasts a veritable 'Who's Who' of gothic literature, present and past.  Notable names include the Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H.P. Lovecraft, M. R. James, K. Trap Jones, B. E. Scully, Sydney Leigh, Norman Partridge and, nestled among the Table of Contents, yours truly.

Publisher Alex Scully has done a fine job assembling a thick and gorgeous book.  Or books, as is the case. I was thrilled when a fat package arrived in the mail on Monday, May 20  It contained my copy of the special edition World Horror Con 2014 hardcover release of the anthology, gorgeously enhanced by four vibrant color interior illustrations. There's something extra-special about reading your work in hardcover. The book (officially considered 'textbook-size') is so big, so beautiful, it doesn't stand upright in any of the glass-front bookcases that contain my archives of published work.

End is filled, cover to cover, with stories of environmental horror in which mankind's hubris comes back to haunt us. My particular contribution to the book owes to a dream I had twenty years ago, in which I was trapped in a house located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.  Olfactory authorities claim we don't 'smell' in our dreams, but I remember vividly the thick fragrance of sap from the Douglas firs that surrounded the house, as well as the steady drip of rain.  Beyond the house, among those trees, terrible danger lurked.  Within the house, an equally deadly threat brewed.  Both were the result of our disposable society's shortsightedness.  We recycle almost everything here in our fair mountain town, and we compost year-round.  Still, having a tale in this book has made me feel like our small family is making a difference in helping to heal our wounded planet.

And then there's that Table of Contents. Who wouldn't love to have their original short story published alongside a reprint by the author who wrote Frankenstein?  Or the stellar Mister Poe, my favorite wordsmith of all time? The autumn my first book, Ghost Kisses, was released, I spent Thursday afternoons on the college campus where my then-writers' group met, reading his stories and mine and reciting "Lenore" -- that elegant elegy is still tattooed upon my grey matter, able to be invoked start to finish at a moment's notice.  As for Mister Hawthorne...

When I was in grade school, I boarded a bus for a memorable field trip to the House of the Seven Gables. I was blown away at the time to find myself standing in the setting of a book I had read and loved. In the gift shop, I purchased a postcard of the house in a green mat, which hung on my bedroom wall, unframed, from a thumbtack. Somewhere along the way, the postcard got lost.  Last year, my fabulous writing pal Judi Calhoun (a talented name to watch for), upon hearing the story, found the very postcard online -- and framed this one for me as part of my Christmas presents.  It now sits proudly in my Writing Room, atop the archives of my published work.  A week or so after Christmas, I learned that "Every Seven Years, Give or Take" would appear alongside a reprint of Hawthorne's classic, "Rappaccini's Daughter".  Bold stuff.  And quite beautiful.

North Meets South

(At the Common Man Restaurant in Ashland, New Hampshire)

Up here in the frozen hills and valleys of New Hampshire's North Country, there aren't nearly as many choices as in the southern parts of our fair state. Grocery stores don't offer the same variety, the Chinese restaurants don't deliver, and, for the most part, everything's a drive.  But where we excel is in the creative brilliance of our local writers and artists. I was and continue to be blown away by the quality of friends we've made since landing in Xanadu little over a year ago. Many of the fine folks who share in our life here feel like they've been part of the storyline for far longer.  We're blessed, truly.  And more than a little humbled.

I left an amazing writers' group when we bought our home and packed up our lives for this new adventure -- somewhere in time, I'm still sitting at that table in the coffee-and-donut hut, hours before the meeting, headphones on, writing away and euphoric in anticipation of the arrival of my fellow comrades-in-pen. I had no idea what to expect when I began to interact with the scribes in my new community.  Those in the Berlin Writers' Group who have become a second family are, quite simply, among the best.

When we held our first writers' party in our new home last May, members of both groups got to meet and read and break bread.  Turns out, many of the gang from up here knew, through others, writers from down there, and fast friendships began to form.  So quickly that, within months, North and South were attending one another's group meetings, retreats, and two more parties here.  I always felt my new group was a sibling and offshoot to my southern community anyway, based upon the quite solid format laid out by founder and scribe, James Keough.  Two fantastic groups.  A wealth of riches.

(With writer Karen Dent -- Karen is a former actress and once performed on
my favorite soap, the late, great lamented One Life to Live)

So when Jonathan Dubey suggested a meet-and-greet between North and South at a halfway point, not even snow, slush, or slick roads kept eighteen of us from gathering to read fresh pages and enjoying a fine dinner together. Jonathan orchestrated reserving an entire dining room at the Common Man Restaurant in the town of Ashland, and all were invited to share up to 1,200 words of writing for the reading portion of the event.  I read the opening to my new mystery short story, "The Debonairs," about aging Hollywood TV detectives who take up the case after one of their own dies under dubious circumstances.  Others treated us to poetry, novel excerpts, and entire completed stories.  The variety was, as usual, inspiring.  The company was quality of the finest.  Our waitress remarked how much she wanted to hang out in the room and listen to the readings.  But then the readings ended too soon, and suddenly it was time for coffee and dessert.

(Writers' groups -- plural)

The meet-and-greet between groups was an amazing and joyous event, one that will resonate long after the happy hours spent in the restaurant with some of my favorite people and writers in the universe. After goodbyes, I departed with two of my friends and overnighted down in Massachusetts, where I got to enjoy their company and two days of writing and reading stories aloud in front of the wood stove, and also spent needed time with my grandmother, sister, and nieces. Then it was back north where everything was still white and frigid.  But inside, a warm home greeted, and the very next night, I was once more around the big table in the conference room, surrounded by members of the Berlin Writers' Group.  That meeting, in fact, celebrated our one-year anniversary.  Here's to another hundred -- and the next chance to hang with our friends from the south!

How I Spent My Winter Stay-cation

(reading from "The Moths")

What a difference a year and 150 miles make!  Winter in our new home realm North of the Notches redefined the season in late 2013, early '14.  Nights got cool late last August.  By early October, we had the house buttoned up and were running the heat.  By Thanksgiving, temperatures dipped well below zero, and pretty much that's where they have stayed.  On this very morning, we woke and glanced out the kitchen window at the thermometer bolted to the sill -- a frequent routine -- to see that, one week before the official start of spring, the day began at minus ten degrees below zero. It's been a long, cold six months.

And, I must say, a productive six months, too!

A friend in my amazing weekly writers' group (which will soon celebrate it's one-year anniversary) told me that up here, certain people have a tendency to spend the winter staying warm on idle gossip. Given some of the behavior I witnessed soon after landing in town last March, I don't refute the claim.  In fact, I was determined to do the opposite -- and to enjoy my winter producing copy, completing projects, and getting that all-important cleansing breath as a new year welcomed me and Muse to the potential contained within twelve whole fresh months of creativity.

(An early December snowstorm, through the sun porch windows)

The first significant snow fell here in November, signalling, in my mind, the start of winter. White blanketed distant Goose Eye Mountain, visible from several of our upstairs windows, covering up the big stone pattern from which it was named. In early November, I edited and formatted a collection of short fiction devoted to one of my favorite tropes -- Canopic Jars: Tales of Mummies and Mummification.  Soon after, the book debuted to wonderful reviews and reader reception, and was the star of the party at 2013's Anthocon. A week following the release, I put pen to page and began work on a hardboiled detective novel.  By December 22, it was done, edited, and submitted to my German publisher.  I've been told it's in 'serious consideration for publication' as of the last update.

On the first day of the new year, following a wonderful writers' group dinner soiree and reading at the home of one of our good new friends, Irene, I penned a little flash fiction story called "Terrarium" that has yet to go out the door, but soon will.  Another ten short stories and one novella have since gotten their first draft endings. I've had an equal number of stories bring home publishing contracts, including "Every Seven Years, Give or Take", a tale based upon a terrifying dream about several survivors in the Pacific Northwest locked inside a house, hiding from dangers outside.  The story is set to appear in May in the print anthology Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, which will also contain (in addition to a stellar lineup of contemporary talents) reprints by Poe, Lovecraft, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Mary Shelley.  Talk about being in great company!

(the backyard blanketed in December white)

On January 12, I was asked to read from my combat science fiction short story, "The Moths", which appeared in the beautiful Live Free or Sci Fi, the third in a series of pulp fiction anthologies all set or centered around my home state. The reading, held in Littleton, New Hampshire at the lovely The Village Bookstore on a brisk, gray Sunday, was well- attended, and culminated with several members of my writers' group and I having dinner with the book's editor, Rick Broussard.  Rick also edits New Hampshire Magazine in addition to this series of beautiful books.

In late February, I attended a wonderful writers' retreat.  A week earlier, I was approached by a filmmaker who had seen the segment on my career last summer on TV's New Hampshire Chronicle. He then hired me to write a screenplay based upon his original idea and, in very short time, I'd completed a full draft of the script. Casting for this very creepy feature commenced earlier this very week, and filming is scheduled to begin in early May.  Given our excellent working relationship, there's talk of another script -- perhaps even a creature-feature-style anthology based upon a handful of my short stories, including "Mummy Chips", my tale from Canopic Jars, which has been discussed.

The days ahead will tell on that proposed idea, and others presently in the works.  I just hope there's considerably more warmth in the forecast.

Long Live Jonathan Frid

There are points where we turn in one direction, and our entire life alters -- had we gone the opposite way, our worlds would be completely different.  For me, the major turning points involve a September night in 1975, seated in front of the television; a trip to the movies with my group of high school friends on a balmy late August night in the summer of 1980 that amounted to the biggest permission slip of my life: to be what I wanted most, a writer; quitting a thankless job I loathed for a creative career and literary lifestyle I love, July 1991; my first writing retreat, Wentworth Mountain, October 1993. Before the first of those times when my life turned in the correct directions, leading me to this present morning in the then-unthinkable year of 2012, there was Dan Curtis's brilliant and dreamy daytime soap opera, Dark Shadows, which ran from 1966-71.

Set in fictional Collinsport, Maine, DS followed the week-daily travails of the cursed Collins Family, whose extended membership included werewolves, ghosts, witches, Franken-humans, Lovecraftian old gods, and bloodsuckers.  Most celebrated among the drama's paranormal players was Barnabus Collins, the 175-year-old vampire played so seductively by Jonathan Frid.  Sporting the best windswept haircut ever, an onyx ring, and a silver wolf's-head cane, Frid's Barnabus was suave, mysterious, and supremely handsome.  Barnabus Collins didn't turn me gay but, at so early an age, his masculine elegance unleashed powerful emotions that helped me to understand and embrace my sexual identity -- not so easy a thing given the time in which I grew up.

On April 13, 2012, Jonathan Frid passed away, less than a month before the premiere of the new Tim Burton big screen parody of Dark Shadows, in which the late, great actor reportedly boasts a brief cameo.  General consensus regarding the film is that we fans of the original will either love it for what it is, or hate it for what it isn't.  Regardless, until I join Mister Frid beyond the veil in whatever afterlife awaits, I will always love him for contributing mightily to what has been a very happy, well-lived life -- and part of me will ever be in love with the immortal character he brought to life in the role of Barnabus Collins.

Spring Cleaning

Eight months ago, I set about assembling a sizable collection of original stories, short and long, for my publisher and editor at Evil Jester Press. Early this month, I turned in my final thumbs-up on the manuscript's galleys and the book has since been released in both digital and print versions.  For two fantastic days last week, a special promotion put The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse: Twenty-Six Tales from the Terrifying Mind of Gregory L. Norris at the #1 spot on Amazon Kindle's Short Story Collections best seller list (it made it to #9 overall in the Horror category), where it leapfrogged over both Kipling's Riki Tiki Tavi and the collected works of Mark Twain.  Muse was with me intimately for a long time in the physical and spiritual senses; I set out to create a 'greatest hits' vibe with it and, so far, the early reader reviews have been stellar.  But while writing the collection, dust and cat hair collected, as did the latest contracts and pay stubs in piles, files of longhand manuscripts, and contributor copies, too.  A wild sense of mayhem cropped up in what I consider the heart of my home in a way that's rarely, if ever, been allowed.

As most of my friends and colleagues know, I love a clean living space -- and a spotless work environment even more.  An uncluttered home in the physical world does benefit the cerebral, making it easier and more enjoyable to put down the beginnings, middles, and ends of work I'm proud to have bear my byline.  That, and I'm a compulsive neat-freak, always have been.  But during the creation of so much fresh material for the collection (and the numerous other projects I worked on in and around Muse), the condition of my writing room suffered. With my baby published, yesterday I poured a tall iced hazelnut coffee, called up a spooky old flick on the computer screen, and set about putting things to rights to a degree my home office hasn't seen since last November.

New storage boxes I fell in love with finally found their correct places, as did new strings of cheery white and blue mini-lights, replacing ones that went supernova in January.  Every surface and object in the room got dusted -- our two wonderful rescue cats spend their days lounging in here while I write and edit, so my Writing Room needed to be 'shaved' as well.  All the latest contributor copies (I had nine anthologies containing my short stories and novellas released from December 2011 into March of 2012) went into the archives, floors got scrubbed, the rug vacuumed.  All of my artwork -- and there is plenty, especially on the 'Muse Wall' of celebrity autographs beside my desk -- got a polish, as did the windows, lamps, and light sculpture.

I filed all of my paperwork, and then spent another half an hour or so filing files containing more than a few months' worth of the latest manuscripts -- some, the original drafts of novellas and short stories penned specifically for Muse.  Indoctrinating them into my lateral filing cabinet drawers, which contain some thirty-three years of manuscripts, felt liberating and uplifting.  While I have yet to hold the print version of my baby (that's still some forty-eight hours from now), it felt like I had completely put the collection to bed -- and done something with this book that would make any writer supremely happy.

Files filed.  Not one stitch of stray paperwork -- or paper -- anywhere to be found.  Dust dusted.  Crystals and lamps and objects d'art sparkly.  Lights lit.  Order and organization reestablished. Spring cleaning done.  I've spent the last several months working on this monstrosity of a collection -- Muse weighs in at a very hefty 170,000-plus words and, as my wonderful senior editor jokes, would be suitable as a weapon of choice should one come up against the living dead and find themselves needing a blunt object with which to bash in skulls.  I've also done plenty of soul searching and reevaluating since the last weeks of 2011, mostly about the kind of writer I wish to be and the literary life I've always wanted to live.  Spring cleaning in the bigger picture this year has been singularly productive and I hope that literary life will continue with a minimum of roadblocks and red tape.

In forty-eight hours, I depart for a week-long adventure, most of which will be spent at World Horror Con with fellow scribes I adore and industry folk I'm eager to meet.  The Muse book party will be held next Friday night in the pair of rooms across from Saturday night's Stoker Awards venue -- pink champagne, sandwiches, and butter cream cake are on the order, along with a reading from the book (I am thinking of sharing the shortest story contained within the covers, "Veneer," which I wrote during my most recent visit to New York City).  I plan to work on several manuscripts while traveling and during down times at the con, including a novel, a novella, and a short story.  And when I come home, it will be to a clean, bright, and welcoming office where I'll pen my latest literary adventures as I wait for the next of 2012's real-time ones.

NYC Adventure -- Part Three: My Reading at Bluestockings Bookstore

All Photos by Sandy Shelonchik

The morning after the play -- the day of my big reading at Bluestockings Bookstore (I hoped it would be big!) -- dawned bright and brisk.  Dressing in a variation of the comfortable new designer threads I'd brought with me (jeans, Hilfiger shirt, Champion sneakers, which turned out being more comfortable then I'd imagined once they were walked in), I wandered to an all-night eatery next door to my hotel called Danny's and took an enormous breakfast and iced coffee to go. Following the difficult trip into the city and the debacle at the reception desk, I was somewhat exhausted and opted to dine in my room, once more in my very comfortable Perry Ellis blue flannel checked jammies.  After breakfast, I uncapped my fountain pen, opened to a fresh page in the full notebook of tear-out sheets I'd brought with me as a backup, and began to write the short ten-minute play "Chat" that's been haunting my card catalog of unwritten story ideas since Y2K.  "Chat" is set in that same year, and explores the politics of an old-school chat room where few, if any, of the attendees are really what they claim or who they appear to be.  I figured the timing to long last complete #62 from my list of unwritten ideas was perfect; though the play format isn't one I'm entirely comfortable with, I found the pages flying past and finished the longhand draft while seated in the hotel's lobby, waiting for my two fantastic New York City pals to arrive for dinner prior to the reading.

David Bernstein and I

You couldn't hope to meet nicer -- or read better -- than David Bernstein.  I'd appeared with David in numerous short fiction anthologies previous to our first meeting in the flesh at November 2011's wonderful conference, Anthocon.  A few weeks prior, I'd enjoyed his unnerving lead story "From Under the Bed" in Blood Bound Books' Night Terrors collection. Since the conference, David has notched five book deals with such great presses as Samhain, Severed, and EJP.  So it was a real treat when he and his gorgeous gal-friend Sandy Shelonchik suggested we meet up for a nibble before the reading, which they planned to take in. 

There's a loft over at Danny's, very comfortable seating, great food, so that's where we went.  While talking the writing life and enjoying our fare, numerous cartoon characters sauntered in, led by Smurfette.  Among the parade: Puss-in-Boots, Minnie Mouse, Hello Kitty, and Elmo from Sesame Street.  Seriously, you can't make this stuff up...nor did I when I tell you that Smurfette removed her white apron, flashing us her blue ta-tas.  She then also removed her head and she, it turns out, was really a he.  As our unintentional dinner theater commenced with even more cartoon guests arriving in ones and twos, it dawned on me that we weren't far from the flagship Toys-R-Us store in Times Square.  Mystery solved.  Retinal damage done, perhaps permanently.  Blue, I tell you.  They were blue.

We jumped into their car and David drove us into the East Village.  He found the best parking spot right across from the bookstore, and there we were.  Bluestockings is a fantastic venue, bright and energetic, perfumed by the delicious fair-trade coffee they serve, the sort of place I'd want to write and sip my Joe daily by the gallon if I lived in the neighborhood. There, I met our hostess, the formidable Kathleen Warnock, who edits for both John Wiley & Sons and Cleis Press and organizes many of the fine and fun readings around the city, including this annual event.  The place was already frenetic and filled with what I hoped would be the audience when we arrived -- they were, and continued to grow as chairs were set out and ever more floor space vanished.  By the time the first reader, the divine Sinclair Sexsmith took to the mic, there wasn't an empty seat in the bookstore.  Nor was there much room to navigate the aisles, which was just too cool.  Richard Labonte, one of my favorite editors and the man who had invited me to read at the event, would have been proud.  The place was packed!

Going in alphabetical order according to author's last name, the crowd enjoyed the elegant, unapologetic offerings of seven breathtakingly brilliant authors.  When my turn came, my bio was read and one audience member remarked, "My God, we have a celebrity reader among us tonight!"

Dressed in my new favorite shirt, the one bearing an image of a typewriter that may be the best Christmas gift ever, I handed out the stunning promotional cards for Muse, opened my brandy-new copy of Best Gay Romance 2012, and read from my longish short story, "The Bachelors."  The response to my work was so positive, the applause that followed, too kind. I signed autographs, mingled with the audience, noticed a few Muse cards left behind on seats, and told myself they would make great free swag for the bookstore to insert in customers' bags the following day.  I and my two lovely pals sauntered out and returned to the heart of the city for dessert and coffee.  Later the night, I reluctantly bid them goodbye and walked back to the hotel, eager to put down more pages.  The reading inspired me to the Nth!

The gorgeous Sandy, beneath a sign that made us chortle!

Friday morning, I was up super early, grabbed more breakfast and iced coffee from the all-nighter, ate it in my room, and worked on a novel chapter and a short story, eager to pack up and return home as soon as possible. While seated at the desk, I heard the doorknob tested not once but several times.  Finally, I got up and peered through the peephole at the very narrow corridor outside my hotel room, where, a cleaning woman in a pink and white housekeeping uniform moved up and down the hallway, waving her hands and chanting.  I had left the 'Do Not Disturb' tag on my door and gathered she was testing the lock, for whatever reason.  I also realized she was doing some sort of religious blessing, which struck me as so odd, so askew, that I knew it would appear in a story.  I didn't expect the story to materialize so quickly. Packed up, I checked out of the hotel, returned to the Port Authority, and waited for the first in a long string of buses to ferry me home to New Hampshire.  At the terminal and then on the ride back, I wrote most of "Veneer," a short story about that odd encounter (I would finish it the following day, camped out in my living room).  The ride north was arduous and unpleasant, but by 6:40 PM it was over, and I returned home, my series of adventures and misadventures to New York City concluded.