At Home in Bluffton

Tales to Terrify is now live...

2012-01-13T09:25:00.005-06:00

Now I can talk.

Beginning today, Friday the 13th, January, 2012, you'll be able to stop by at "Tales to Terrify" and listen to the best in English language horror and dark fantasy. I'll be the weekly host of the show, produced by the Hugo Award-winning StarShipSofa.

TTT wil feature new fiction, classic tales, tales from the recent past by masters of the form and by voices that might be new to you. We'll also have reviews, commentary and more. So...drop in some midnight -- or any time -- and listen.

If you don't know Marty Mundt who's story, CHAIR, kicks off the site, Marty's a Chicago author, one of the centerpieces of the old Twilight Tales group. CHAIR is typical of Marty's work, a funny, witty, disturbing little piece. This one Reminds me of Voltaire or Swift. But, no, no....it's Mundt.
Marty's new novel. "Animated Americans" was recently published by Creeping Hemlock Press and is available on Amazon, B&N and wherever fine electrons congregate. It's also in ink on paper at those same sites.

Now go. Listen.

We're at http://talestoterrify.com/

Oh...the cover art for this month is by Michael Brack (http://michael.brack.free.fr/)

Comments to the site can be sent to TalesToTerrify@gmail.com Hope to hear from you.

Root Soup, Winter Soup at Tuesday Funk

2012-01-05T11:28:00.003-06:00

"Tuesday Funk," is a year+ old writer's reading series. It happens every first Tuesday of every month at the Hopleaf Bar on Clark Street, Chicago. Writer Bill Shunn is the host.

This past Tuesday, December 3, 2012, I read my short story "Root Soup, Winter Soup," from DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME.

By the way, I wasn't nervous. I've got a permanent tremor of the paws.

I hope you'll enjoy it.

An Ancient Mariner... Indeed, Mr. Chwedyk.

2011-12-27T23:58:00.006-06:00

Since the release earlier this month of "Drink for the Thirst to Come," the collection has been gathering some very nice comments from other writers. I wanted to excerpt and post a few here.

"Santoro is a master at the top of his game, believe me!"
--Robert Walker, author of "Shadows in the White City," and "Children of Salem."
"Emerging as one of our true worthy successors to Ray Bradbury...Lawrence Santoro captures lightning in a killing jar... Lyrical, horrific, and luminous with dark wonder.”
--Jay Bonansinga, New York Times bestselling co-author of "The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor."

"Lawrence Santoro turns the emotional volume to 11 and cranks it up from there...with a breathless sense of detail and cadence..."
--Richard Chwedyk, Nebula Award-winning author of "Bronte's Egg."

Jay's entire comment: “Emerging as one of our true worthy successors to Ray Bradbury, Chicago scribe Lawrence Santoro captures lightning in a killing jar in his new collection DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME. Lyrical, horrific, and luminous with dark wonder, Santoro’s tales frame archetypes such as zombies, the apocalypse, the mysteries of space, and good old fashioned monsters with heartbreaking undercurrents of humanity and… well… sadness. Haunting and highly recommended!”

Here's what Richard said: “In these stories, Larry Santoro turns the emotional volume to 11 and cranks it up from there. They are set in worlds at once familiar and unique, amusing and horrifying, brought to life with a breathless sense of detail and cadence. The slightest gesture is illuminated with the passionate, unfaltering precision of an Ancient Mariner unfolding his tale, commanding your uncompromised attention.”

A Question for My Readers

2011-12-22T22:28:00.009-06:00

Let me prep you:

The expanded, 'author's cut' of my first novel, "Just North of Nowhere" is currently available on Kindle for $4.99. It's a big generous book, a five-star, dark fantasy set in a small town in the upper Midwest and deals with...

Well, go have a look. You can go here: http://www.amazon.com/Just-North-of-Nowhere-ebook/dp/B0054HKRC0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324613885&sr=8-1 Or you can just click on the headline, "A Question for My Readers," above.
The mood, the atmosphere, the characters are in the Bradbury vein and it's a good read for just about everyone in the family.
The question: it's $4.99. Would you pick it up if it were, say $1.99?

Let me know. Stop by my Facebook page, send an email. Call. And, if you like the book, please consider giving it a review.

And don't forget "Drink for the Thirst to Come." That's up there, too.

Now on Kindle...

2011-12-19T21:55:00.002-06:00

I spoke too soon. I said it would be up soon. "Drink for the Thirst to Come" is now available on Kindle. $2.99. Wow. I'll have to get one, myself. And if you like it, please consider it for a Stoker nod or at least a nice review on Amazon.

Well, that's even old news because I did get one myself. Just wanted to look at it there on my screen...savor it...love it with my eyes and fingertips only. And it's easier to read from at signings and such... No really!

It's here...

2011-12-16T16:25:00.005-06:00

There it is. One pound of it. 365pages of it. I'm happy. The image should be up on the Amazon site in a few days--along with the option to buy it on Kindle--but here it is.

And when you buy it-- and you will--please read it aloud--which you should--and after that, if you like it--which goes without saying--I hope you'll return to Amzon and write a glowing review of it--which will be completely honest--and let me know about it.

So enjoy.

A Winter's Tale

2011-12-05T10:33:00.004-06:00

I wrote this story years and years ago. Then it was part of a novel that drifted away. It was published years ago in more or less the same form as you have it here. I posted it a year ago but I wanted to put it back up because I have a lot of affection for it. Except for my father not being killed in World War II, it's almost autobiographical. It's also almost biographical because my father's brother was seriously wounded in the War. Here it is. It's called...

A WORD FROM THE WORLD

The snow had started the day before. The sun was bright in a clear sky and it snowed! Each flake caught the sun. Sparkles swam in the air living along the wind. People passing on Cottage Street looked up to the clear air to let the cold colors hit them in the eye, or on the glasses. They smiled, admiring their shadows as they walked and the sunny, sunny snowstorm falling around them.
A genuine curiosity, Pop-pop called it.
Soon, though, the sky became gray and the snow continued into the dark. This was more like it. All that blew and rolled down streets, all the things that stood at corners, squatted in the back alley or at the bottom of the yard were, first, stopped, then pinned to the ground by the falling snow, then covered into smooth lumps.
It snowed all through supper and after. It snowed through the radio and Pop-pop's reading. It snowed even harder when I went to bed. All night, I'd wake and go to the window to wish for more; I pressed my face against the cold glass to peer at the sky above the eaves. I wanted there to be more snow in it. And there was. The sky was black but the air was lit by the streetlight at the end of the alley. Pieces of white day fell through the night and brushed little whiskers against the glass. I thought the wet chill would crack my cheek when I smiled.
In the morning the world was new. Yesterday's lumps were smooth and the spaces between them were even and white. In the yard, the snow had rolled in on waves of wind from over the far fence and dropped quietly and deeply. It filled the space from the back of the house to the alley, then buried the fence and the alley. Then it buried the Erby's fence across the way; then buried their yard, too. Then everything was all the same.
When the wind blew hard enough to make the electric pole by the corner sway and the wires clack and chatter their icy silver loads that had been building through the storm, Pop-pop looked up and down the alley. He shook his head. "We'd best stay in," he said. "All of us." Falling wires, he said. Careful, he said. Electrocution, he said.
Nanna looked into the pantry and shook her head. "The food'll never last," she said.
When the wind howled, the snow rose alive, spinning, and the world went white. So big a thing as Mount Amos disappeared. So too, did Aunt and Uncle Erby's house across the alley. Our yard began, now, at the back door and went on forever, around other houses and on forever. The world was just our place, just our house and the sweetly shaped mounds of snow stretching forever. A few black lines crossed above, or rose from it. A pole down the way. The very tips of the back fence, dead black morning glory vines still hanging in tatters from summer. Then nothing. The end of the world. Our place only.

I said once that by the time the telegram came, I already knew. Here's what happened.

It was in that snow. Mother and I were on the front porch. A trolley passed the house and rumbled slowly, slipping, wheels spinning uphill toward the end of town. A man came up the sidewalk. Through the snow I heard him whistling Rum and Coca-Cola. I laughed. Snow was blowing in front, behind, around him. It was climbing his legs and wrapping his face. It looked as if you could see right through him, as though pieces of him were being carved away by the wind. He looked alive inside with snow.
I laughed some more. He heard me laugh and looked up. He saw me on the porch with Mother. He looked at the door behind me then at the envelope in his hand. I laughed and he had seen us. Mother was tucking me, buttoning my face into the wool snow suit, already wet from the blowing snow. I laughed and she turned to see. She saw the man coming and stopped, her fingers stopped on the button at my mouth. I could smell cold, wet wool and my mother's warm skin, cold cream smooth and fragrant from morning's dishes.
The street was empty. The hill was white all the way to where it disappeared. Black sticks stuck out, here, there: Trees. A fence. Phone poles. The trolley tracks were black lines along the way, then they glazed over white, then vanished. The wind howled and for a minute the street faded into white, then vanished, too. The man disappeared with the rest of the world. The world was our porch and Mother frozen at my mouth and I thought, "Good. He's gone. Daddy'll be alright." Then the wind dropped its voice, and the man stepped onto our porch and shook his hat like a dog.
There was nothing to it at all. He wiped his glasses with his finger like a windshield wiper. They fogged up again and he took them off and squinted at the paper.
"Mrs. Er-ness-toe De Angel...?"
Mother nodded. "DeAngelo, yes.††Ernest. It's just Ernie. His name is. Yes. Ernesto. But he's just Ernie."
He brushed the snow off the envelope, gently. He was so gentle; she reached for it, took it, held it, turned it over in her hands. He said, "sign here," and gave her a book and a pen. It wouldn't write.
"Sorry," she said. He took back the pen and blew on it, then rolled it between his two hands, shook it. A big splat of blue plopped onto the snow on the porch. "Sorry," he said. She said, "That's alright." and wrote in the man's book. She put the cap back on the pen and handed it to him, said, "I'll have to get you some money..." and he, "That's okay, Mrs. ma'am. That's okay. I don't need any. I don't usually get." Then he was gone toward town. Another blast of wind rolled the snow, but I could still see him. In a second, the trolley loomed down the hill. It slid on the rails. Sparks showered into the snow from the line above. It stopped. Silent for a moment. It was the only thing we could see in the world. And the man. The trolley and the man. The man got into the trolley. The bell clanged and sounded very close in the wooly snow and the silence. The sweep of the wind went with it, somehow. The trolley growled its sandy wheels against the tracks and disappeared toward town.
Mother held the envelope. I had been forgotten. The wooly button at my mouth was still loose. The envelope was very small.
I knew it meant that daddy wouldn't be home; that he was going to stay at the Pacific Theater. Until the next show. Or the next one. Can you imagine that? That he'd stay away for a long, long time and that I'd be an orphan, now. I didn't want people to look at me right then. I didn't want them to talk to me. All I knew was the backyard was filled with snow taller than me.
I followed her into the house. I was a ghost. Invisible, I could make noises but not lift things, not change things. I could only be what had already been.
No one spoke. Mother stood in the living room and looked at the envelope. It dripped. Nanna came down from upstairs and stopped on the steps to look. Pop-pop came in from the kitchen and looked. I continued on through the house. No one noticed. To the kitchen. There were voices, distant, behind me. I went out back. I was ready for the snow, for the day. The whole expanse of the yard was at my feet. The snow drifted in curving hills to the second floor of Uncle Erby's place. Maggie the dog, looked out an upper window at me. Her tongue on the glass made clear places in the breath haze that bloomed around her nose and muzzle.
The snow started at my feet. I could tunnel through the world, I thought. A tunnel could go anywhere. Everywhere. It would be very cold under the snow, but maybe not too dark. Snow was white.
I dragged open the door to the back porch toilet, the kaibo Pop-pop called it. It was now just a storage place for garden things, junk, old spiders and must, things forgotten. My summer shovel and pail. Too small to dig a tunnel through the world. I tossed them aside. I found Nanna's garden spade. Too long. Too heavy. Pop-pop's cinder shovel was just my size. He used it to fill gunny sacks with furnace ashes. These he kept in the trunk of the LaSalle for winter weight, for traction. The shovel was short. Light. It had a pointed blade. I could dig anywhere with it. A good tool is the first part of a good job, Daddy'd said.
I scooped as I waded down the steps. I tossed, packed, shoved and soon was at the bottom of the porch stairs. The snow rose over my head. I was surrounded by whiteness and was dripping hot already. Sweat tickled down my back and became cold on my skin. I pushed my mittens into the snow in front. It gave way. I leaned into it and fell, slowly, gently carried to the ground. I scooped shovelsful behind me. Soon I was on my knees and burrowing like a groundhog on my way. I shoved the cold, packed whiteness aside, pressing it against the walls of my tunnel. Forcing my way into the heart of winter. It was bright day.

I realized soon how large the world was. I had no idea before. I scooped and scraped, patted and pressed the sides of the tunnel, the roof, smoothed it all, made it nice. Kept going. The sun was far away, on the other side of the snow roof. Out there.
Faint light seeped from where I had begun at the porch, down to where I dug. It darkened as I scooped. I wished I had brought daddy's nightcrawler lantern. I could see it under his bench in the basement. I could see it in the cardboard box, a rag covering most of it. I could see its little clear dome and shiny handle, its flat metal base. I could feel its weight, carrying it. In the darkening snow tunnel, I could almost see the rings of light it made on the tree leaves overhead, could almost hear daddy talking about the fishing we'd have with this beauty that he dangled in my nose before dropping it wriggling into the pail, laughing. Mosquitos and other sweaty summer bugs sang in my ears, climbed in the light against the leaves. The fat worm wriggled into the dirt in the pail and was gone.
The lamp was back there, a world away. In the basement, under the place where people talked.
My breath was just dull gray, now, not silver bright anymore. I wondered how far I'd come. Nowhere near the other side of the world, I knew that. I didn't think I was even at the end of the yard. I tucked my knees to my chin and scooted 'round to lean against the tunnel wall and breathe. The Erby house was ahead. I'd have to get around it. That was first. Then around their garage. Then through Pan's Park. Then up the mountain. After the mountain was the other side, down to Carsonia. A long way from there was Philly. After that, I wasn't sure. I knew that the Pacific Theater started somewhere after Philly. Daddy had gone first to Philly. Then somewhere else.
If I could only remember what Daddy had said. About everything. I could find him, if I could remember. I knew that. Everything that Daddy had said was important, now. Was clues. I had to remember to not get confused with other things. Things I made up, things other people told me. If I could remember it all, I could get to him and we could watch Gone With the Wind together at the Pacific Theater, then come home. Maybe get some ice cream first at Rexall, some hot chocolate. Then we'd come home. I was really mad. Just like daddy got sometimes at me. I was really mad!
When I punched the sides of the tunnel, the wall gave way a little. I punched it again, then I scooped. I widened the scoop. I scraped above, dug below. Soon there was a side passage going a different way. It pointed toward 18th Street. I knew that. The world was so large. I could avoid the Erby house, go around it, then up, up, up the mountain. I started deepening this new route. It was very, very dark in a very short time. Black. I had to back out to where I had branched off. Maybe the other way. I dug for another few minutes until it got too dark in that way and returned to the main shaft.
A curve? Maybe the light would follow a gentle bend? It seemed right and I started to angle left, making the main route to the world into a long gentle arc. Soon it was dark again and I just wanted to stretch out and rest. I was going to need light. I scooped out a little room in the snow, enough space for me to just stretch out. I lay flat on my back. Looked up. If I closed my eyes and pressed against them with my mittens, it was a different dark than if I kept them open. I liked that. It was so quiet out here in the world. The snow was just a few inches above my face. I reached up and smoothed it. Smoothed it flat. Smoothed it hard like a well-packed snowball. It was warmer in there than it was on the outside where wind blew and the cold tried to suck the air out of my chest. There was no wind and the tips of my ears were hot. My fingers were wrinkled. It was warm. I made a little place to lean. It fit me well and was so comfortable. I scraped the ceiling. Some snow fell in my face. It tasted good. Almost sweet. It melted in my mouth and trickled down my throat. It melted on my nose and ran down my neck.
How long would the snow last? How long until it went away and the whole earth would be hard and confusing again with too many roads everywhere and not enough ways to get there? Snow always lasted a long time, but never long enough. I couldn't really rest if I was going to tunnel to the Pacific to find Daddy. I started again. Didn't think, just started into the darkness.
That is what I'm doing, I said. I'm digging to find Daddy at the Pacific Theater and watch Gone With the Wind with him, Sock, the Morons, the First Shirt and all the guys from basic training and his letters. We'd all be together. Maybe I'd need an airplane to fly over the boot camp, to fly over England where the drooling British lived in darkness, and to get to the Pacific Theater where they were all watching Gone With the Wind. I knew it was a long way to travel. But all the world was covered in snow. I was certain of that and that meant that I could get there from here. I'd dig under boot camp, under the British. Then I'll bring him home and we can all go to Carsonia Park and this time, THIS time, I will, I will ride Blitzen the Roller Coaster and maybe I'll even stand and not worry about the "Don't Stand" sign. I'll forget about rats and dirty feet. We'll go to the shooting gallery and shoot the bear together and win big rabbits and give them to Mother. I won't loose my shirt, I won't loose my head.
I was digging in the dark as I was thinking. It was pitch black. I couldn't see anything. I could just feel the snow, the cool snow giving way and being left behind. I hit something. It was hard. It was not ground, not snow. I scraped away around it. It was wood. I could feel it. Wood. It was smooth. I recognized its feel. It was an edge, the edge of my sandbox. I had dug to the sandbox. I was only to the sandbox. On it, had I been able to see, would be puppies playing with butterflies. A boy and a girl digging in the sand by a beach. Waves would be rolling, painted on the wood of my sandbox. I was only to the box and days must have gone by since I started. I scooped around the edge of the box, opened up the tunnel to another direction. I was angry, yelling, was only to the sandbox. I stopped and leaned against the wood. It felt warm. Summer was still in it. The plywood top covered the sand. The sand was summer. It was still there. Still in the box under the snow with me. It was summer and back when I had a daddy.
I could hear my breath coming in and going out. I couldn't see it. Soon I got quieter. It was warmer. I heard nothing. No breathing. No. No wind. Nothing at all. Not Carsonia. Just the distant voices of memory.
My tunnel dropped away; it fell behind me. I was lifted from the world into a swirl of snow and the blasts of wind; there were arms all around me. There were legs and chests, Pop-pop's jowls and Mother. Her hands took me. Hands carried me to the house. It was hot. I was laid on the table. The light was overhead. Bright. I felt hands reaching, opening my snowsuit, hands reaching into the wet wool and drawing me out, peeling my clothes away. Then, I was bare and was being carried up the steps. Water was running in the tub. Mother's hands rubbed me. Nanna's voice said rub him with a terrycloth towel. Rub him and here, make him drink this shot of liquor. And burning hot, it went down my throat and sat warm in my stomach. I wanted to and I did throw up. Then I went into the hot, hot water and everything was steam, and water lapping in my ears. And there were tears.
Later, Mother told me, in bed, that Daddy was lost in action in the Pacific Theater. I knew that. But I listened to her anyway.
I wondered for days after if I had died. Of course I had not. Dr. Kotzen said I was fine. Pop-pop looked for his shovel for a long time. I kept thinking it was in the Pacific. When the snow was gone, there it was.

"Drink..." at the Pre-Release Price!

2011-11-12T14:57:00.005-06:00

I rushed that image below onto the site but I do want to say that my collection, "Drink for the Thirst to Come," is now available for pre-release ordering from Silverthought Press. Click on the title above to be shuffled off too the order page. The price for the next week or so will be $12.99. Once it goes on sale, the cost skyrockets to $14.99.

I love the cover image. It's by a Russian artist, Anton Semenov. Anton is 27 and lives in Bratsk, Irkutsk--which we all remember from hours of RISK-playing. The final form of the covers, front and back, fonts, etc., might change slightly, but Anton's work just sings. That image makes a resonant statement about the title story and the book as a whole.

Here is the logline that will eventually appear somewhere on the cover or inside the book:

"Here There Be Monsters: The fifteen stories of Drink for the Thirst to Come lead the reader into the darkest corners of the imagination. The people who inhabit these places are demons or angels; here, life ends horribly or stretches to the darkest eternity. Here, the world dies whimpering, ends with a bang, or goes down with the clack of a billion tiny teeth. Here, you’ll find all the standard tropes, vampires, zombies, ghosts, ghouls. You may not recognize them, not right away. They might be standing in a quiet corner or walking in a sunny field or seated next to you on a bus, they might be pulling up to the gas pump or, hell, they might be you, sitting there, reading the book."

So why are you still here? Go. Buy. Wait. Rejoice. Read.

Drink for the Thirst to Come

2011-11-11T14:33:00.000-06:00

A reminder: Chicago. 11/11/11. Tonight. 7 to 9. Bad Grammar Theater. 1743 South Halsted Street. Readings. I'll be reading from "Drink for the Thirst to Come." Now available for pre-order from Silverthought Press.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Drink-for-the-Thirst-to-Come-by-Lawrence-Santoro/127290900710504

Catching Up

2011-10-27T07:58:00.006-05:00

Just a few notes to keep the site up to date.

1. DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME: there will be news on this front forthcoming from Silverthought Press on November 11. 11/11/11. Appropriate. One of the tentpole stories in the collection, "Wind Shadows," is set during the First World War. Of course you understand that reference! Hopefully, jumping the gun here on the Silverthought announcement, the book will be out just before the Christmas season gets underway.

2. And pertinent to the note above, Silverthought is in "discussions" (the word is placed in quotation marks because the discussions are progressing across the internet and being translated, English to Russian, Russian to English via Babelfish and its Russian counterpart) with the artist Anton Semenov, to do the cover art for the book. I am chuffed (as Tony C. Smith might say) at the prospect. Anton is an incredible talent. You should seek him out and have a look.

2A. Silverthought has also created a facebook page for DRINK... Stop by here and "LIKE" it, please. It feartuews some of Anton's art and will soon have some audio/video snippits from the book to come.

3. Currently, the StarShipSofa's "Sofanaut" interview series features an interview with me. Go here: http://sofanauts.com/ It's 50-some-odd minutes of chat.

4. More will follow. Really. Stop by the Facebook page for DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME and "LIKE" it. Really and also....

5. Stop by the Silverthought Press web site: http://www.silverthought.com/ and keep in touch.

Okay. That's it. Have a day.

Come have a listen...

2011-09-16T23:31:00.015-05:00

So you opted to not show up at Quimby's Bookstore last Friday. Okay. I understand. It's not too late. You may click on the title above, scroll down and hear the whole damn thing, three readings, AND you may buy the book, AMERICAN WASTELAND by name.

You can buy it in e-book form or in a wondrous hand-made ink-on-paper thing. Okay, you can get the e-version for free but you can opt to pay for it if you believe things of this sort--books, stories, and such--should be paid for and that the people who produce them deserve payment for their work.

Here... To fix on as you listen, here are some shots from the reading. Sorry. I'm a lousy iPhotographer. My hands shake too much. Here's Jason, introducing us...

Below... is Delphine. She's an excellent writer AND she's got a French accent. See what you missed?

Farther down is Mark Brand...a great writer and also one of the editors from Silverthought Press.

And there am I, at the bottom and the last reader of the evening. Tycelia took this one. You can't really see, but I'm sweating like a metaphor...

well, I'm sweating like me. It was 90 degrees in there and I was dressed for a chilly night. Dumb.

Did you listen? Yes, yes. I read much to fast. Trying to get to a certain point in the story in a truncated time limit. I didn't make it. That's what I get for not rehearsing.

So go and get the book. Pay for it if you can. We'll love you for it.

2011-09-07T21:41:00.002-05:00

I wanted to share this. Watch it in full screen mode. This is why we explore, why we leave the cradle and go into the world.

About Outside In: Fundraising Launch Summer 2011 from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

See? Why aren't we out there along with our machines? Did we get bored? Was it too expensive? Did we have better things to do?

Release Party for CCLaP's AMERICAN WASTELAND

2011-08-28T02:23:00.004-05:00

In advance of the release of my collection, DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME by Silverthought Press in early fall, 2011, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, or CCLaP, will publish the title story in their dystopian anthology, AMERICAN WASTELAND. On September 9, CCLaP will host a release party for the book at Quimby's Bookstore, 1854 West North Avenue, in Chicago. The party starts at 7, readings from m'self, Mark Brand, and other contributors will follow. Yes, there will be free beer.

Hope you can make it.

Book Signing via the Post

2011-07-30T18:06:00.007-05:00

I just finished signing the author's signature sheets that will be off to Ireland on Monday for Dee Cunniffe to put into the special editions of StarShipSofa Stories, vol. 3. I'm proud to have a story in this volume.

That's it. Just that. Keep buying JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE on Kindle and Nook and from wherever else you get your e-reading supplies. And look for DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME out soon from Silverthought Press!

Reader review of JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE

2011-07-28T09:35:00.003-05:00

A reader recently posted a review of "Just North of Nowhere." I hope those of you who aren't fantasy fans will read and take this person's comments to heart. She says...

"Fantasy is not normally my thing, but this book was so much more. I think it was the rich storytelling itself that got me - it's true that this book begs to be read aloud. Each tale has a distinct tone; the stories run the gamut from spooky to magical, and they are always wondrous. There's something about a small town with a rich history that runs just beneath the surface, and Santoro shows us what that might be. Highly recommended."

I recommend it, too. Really. Highly.

Now on Kindle...

2011-06-09T09:32:00.004-05:00

"Just north of Nowhere" is now up on Kindle. In addition, Smashwords has it on several e-book platforms (am I using that term correctly? Probably not...). Anyway, you can now get the e-dition of JNoN with about 10 thousand more words than ever before. Well, okay, it was about 10K words longer before we decided to cut them to save paper and to keep the book from costing another 4, 5 bucks at the cash register. Anyway. Now it's all back and al for under 5 bucks. $4.99 in fact. Just click on the post title, above, "Now on Kindle..." Go on.

As a side note, my poem, DOWN, is now out there on the StarShipSofa. Please stop by and listen to Diane Severson's monthly segment, Poetry Planet. This month she presents 10 first-contact-themed poems from 9 incredible writers and me. Farther aside: host/editor/publisher/producer Tony C. Smith does an hour-long interview with me.

AND there's part 2 of a Michael Moorcock novella on there too!

Go. www.staarshipsofa.come Listen. Enjoy.

JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE...soon in ebook form

2011-05-20T09:45:00.005-05:00

During this year, Amazon tells us, sales of e-books surpassed those of the ink-on-paper variety. I still prefer to hold a real paper and ink book in my hands. I prefer the smell of them, the heft of them. I like going into the shops of quiet little people who sell books because they love the bookish life. Ah well. I succumb. As my collection, DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME nears its release date -- June, 2011 -- my first novel, JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE, will be re-released on Kindle, iBook and other such platforms.

This edition will be expanded by about 10 thousand words and will include several chapters specially written for the release. It will be priced in the 5 to 6 dollar range. I hope you buy it, hope you enjoy it. At least you'll be able to read it in the dark -- on the iPad and iPhone anyway.

Have a look at the video Dave Fell and I made in 2007 for the initial release of the print book from Annihilation Press.

American Gods Contest

2011-04-13T22:25:00.008-05:00

I never enter contests. Most probably because I'm sure I'll not win. Face it, there's enough competition involved with getting along as a writer (actor, director, whatever). The business is cut-throat and nasty as it is so why add to the angst by turning it into a game? Anyway, I threw my picture and voice into this, so I hope you'll vote for me.

DOWN...

2011-03-26T14:53:00.004-05:00

I'm making a fuss over this, I know. I've more or less finished my first poem in about 15 years. First poem exclusive of the lovely little things my wife and I exchange at birthdays, anniversaries, et al. This one is a narrative s.f. piece, the words of a dying astronaut whose vehicle has just had a catastrophic touchdown on a distant place. He's obviously the first there.

That's about it.

I wish I had a decent image to accompany this post. Maybe I'll find one.

The fuss - my fuss - owes to the fact that back in the 80s of the last century, writing poetry for me to read in what was then a rather flourishing bar poetry community here in Chicago, was my reentry into writing...writing anything at all.

Since then, I segued into writing (then selling) full-out unversed fiction and have more or less continued doing that full-time in the last decade.

So out of touch am I with the forms, though, I'm not even certain if this qualifies as poetry. We'll see. I just recorded it and I believe it'll be podcast in the near future.

We'll see.

Are you listening?

2011-02-24T09:16:00.008-06:00

I ask if you are listening because if you're not, we've pretty much had it.

Ever since you began thinking of yourselves as "consumers" -- data points in corporate spread sheets -- and not "customers" -- individuals whose business is valued by the company with whom you are dealing, ever since the corporatocracy and its handmaiden, the Republican Party, began to disassemble the middle class using Ronald Reagan's smiling, confident bullshit popularity to toss you a few bones while the button counters were stealing your lives, ever since you let wedge-issues define your beliefs and let slogans be your voice...ever since we stopped thinking, ever since we decided to be just comfortable...we have been turning our souls over to the corporation. You see? If you're not a data-point, if you're not a consumer, if you're not a smiling, happy, contented mass of millions swilling what you're fed, then you are a problem. You ask too many questions, you want too much, you are not content to live in the gutter and go fight the wars that you're told to fight. You are a problem if you're not just a data-point.

You may not be a member of a union, but in very real ways, the struggles of labor to organize, to demand the right to bargain collectively with the owners, have elevated your lives. Those struggles, those victories gained through bloodshed, violence, intimidation, helped create a middle-class that was the envy of the world.

The fight in Wisconsin is not about saving state money, it's not about balancing a state budget -- on the backs of the middle class, where such budgets are always balanced -- it is about this governor, those corporate interests taking on and crushing the union.

A good friend of mine, Gary Houston, maintains an ad hoc blog-by-mail in which he shares news, information, and passion. This was posted yesterday. Bob Clarke is an acquaintance...his self-taken photo is at the bottom.

Bob Clarke writes:

Yesterday, somewhat on impulse, I hopped in my car and drove to Madison - under three hours from Chicago. I arrived about 5 PM and parked easily on Washington Ave. (Route 151), about two blocks below the Capitol building. There was a rally (one among many over these days) scheduled for that time, in this case to coincide with a particularly repugnant 6 PM speech by Gov. Walker (see below for the prank call yesterday.)
Signs supporting the movement of resistance to the attack on unions greeted me from bars, restaurants, and houses on Capitol hill. But in the early dark, I was somewhat disappointed by the paucity of people on the grounds, though there were media vehicles everywhere and two huge Teamster-union trucks. I followed a trickle of people with picket signs right into the building: no police at door, no metal detectors, no impediment of any kind.
As soon as I approached the impressive rotunda - under the only granite dome in America, finished 1917 - I realized from the beat of drums and the roar of the huge crowd that thousands of people had indeed taken possession of this physical citadel of legislative power. As you'll have seen in the countless media reports, the whole place is bedecked in banners and signs defending workers' rights and denouncing the governor and his Republican legislative majority. The protesters are a mix of blue collar and white collar union workers (of course many teachers) and their families, predominantly white but with a good-sized black presence, university students, and other sympathizers. Particularly popular were contingents of police and firefighters (in full regalia) supporting the protest even through Gov. Walker has exempted their unions from his proposal to end public-union bargaining rights.
Punctuated by stirring union songs, especially "Solidarity Forever," various speakers held forth, some hardly audible, while TV monitors showed the governor, totally drowned out by cries of "Kill the Bill." I felt galvanized by the sense of determination and anger, by the dawning realization that these protesters are there around the clock, many of them spending the night in sleeping bags on the floors of various levels of the building - often doing homework on their laptops. Free food and supplies are abundant; there is an unending flow of pizza deliveries - take what you want. Everything well organized and peaceful. In a committee room high up toward the dome, dozens of striking U. of W. teaching assistants staff a "situation room" where they manage the logistics of the occupation. To them I handed a donation that friends the Kriegers sent from Washington state.
Because it's Madison the free candy bars are of organic fair-trade chocolate. Because it's Wisconsin there is a statue of Bob LaFollette, surrounded by placards and backpacks of students who may never have heard of him until now. When I asked one cherubic young man who was standing against a marble wall knitting whether he was Madame DeFarge, he answered, "No, I'm an alcoholic, knitting helps me stay sober." He may never have read Dickens, but he wants to fight injustice and oppression.
Students who want to spend the night can walk the few blocks up State Street from the university campus to the Capitol. They were still arriving when I left at 11 PM. One trio I talked to had a rainbow quality: a Vietnamese girl who left that country at age 3, an African-American girl from U. of Wisconsin/LaPorte, and a WASP boy - all had a sense of the historic resonance of their action and and said they're in it for the long haul. When I told them I remembered the Vietnam war protests in Madison, they nodded but probably thought I was a revenant from ancient history. The Vietnamese girl appeared to be about twenty, and 1968 was, after all, 43 years ago!
State troopers were present but not threatening. A newspaper report today says they are more numerous than before; but it's hard to imagine that they could stand up to that crowd. If they got orders to clear the place, they would surely try it late at night when the numbers of protesters are relatively low. (The deputy Attorney General of Indiana was relieved of his duties today for suggesting that they open fire on the demonstrators - perhaps taking his inspiration from Colonel Gaddafy.)
There is supposed to be a massive march and demonstration tomorrow; and this part of the struggle seems likely to continue for some time.

Some useful links:

Yesterday's incredible phone prank, surpassing even my greatest exploits in this challenging sport:

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press – 1 hr 32 mins ago
MADISON, Wis. – A prank caller pretending to be billionaire conservative businessman David Koch was able to have a lengthy conversation with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker about his strategy to cripple public employee unions, the governor's office confirmed Wednesday.
On the call, Walker joked about bringing a baseball bat to a meeting with Democratic leaders, said it would "be outstanding" to be flown out to California by Koch for a good time after the battle is over, and said he expected the anti-union movement to spread across the country.
[Related: What is a right-to-work law?]
Audio was posted on the Buffalo Beast, a left-leaning website based in New York, and quickly spread across the Internet.
Democrats ripped Walker's comments on the call on the Assembly floor Wednesday morning, saying they had nothing to do with his assertion that legislation stripping public employees' collective bargaining rights is needed to help solve a looming budget deficit.
[Related: First person: Wis. budget bill threatens my family]
"That's why we must fight it! That is why people must come to the Capitol and fight this!" Rep. Jon Richards of Milwaukee yelled as thousands of protesters inside the rotunda roared in approval. "This isn't about balancing the budget, this is about a political war."
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie confirmed Walker took the call, which will only heighten widespread suspicions that brothers David and Charles Koch are pulling strings in Wisconsin's battle as part of a conservative agenda to limit the unions' power.
[Related: What is a labor union?]
The governor's plan would take away the ability of state and local public employees to collectively bargain for working conditions, benefits, or any other than their base salaries. Unions could not collect mandatory dues and would face a vote of its members every year to stay in existence.
The plan has set off more than a week of demonstrations at the Capitol, and prompted Wisconsin Senate Democrats to flee the state to block its passage. Similar ideas are being pushed in some other states with Republican governors.
The man pretending to be Koch said, "You're the first domino."
"Yep, this is our moment," Walker said.
The brothers own Koch Industries, Inc., which is the largest privately-owned company in America and has significant operations in Wisconsin. Its political action committee gave $43,000 to Walker's campaign, and donated heavily to the Republican Governors' Association, which funded ads attacking Walker's opponent in last year's election.
[Related: History of stalling tactics in politics]
The Kochs also give millions to support Americans For Prosperity, which launched a $320,000 television ad campaign in favor of Walker's legislation on Wednesday and already has a website, standwithwalker.com, where more than 60,000 have signed a petition supporting his plan.
On the call, Walker talks about speaking with Democratic Sen. Tim Cullen, one of the Democrats hiding in Illinois to stop the bill, and telling Cullen he would not budge. After Walker said he would be willing to meet with Democratic leaders, the caller said he would bring "a baseball bat." Walker laughed and responded that he had "a slugger with my name on it."
The caller suggested he was thinking about "planting some troublemakers" among the protesters, and Walker said he had thought about doing that but declined. Walker said the protests eventually would die because the media would stop covering them.
At the end of the call, the prankster says: "I'll tell you what Scott, once you crush these bastards, I'll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time."
[Related: Largest labor unions in the U.S.]
"Alright, that would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support and helping us move the cause forward. We appreciate it and we're doing the just and right thing for the right reasons and it's all about getting our freedoms back," Walker said.
The caller: "Absolutely. And you know, we have a little bit of vested interest as well" and laughs.
"That's just it. The bottom line is, we're going to get the world movement here because it's the right thing to do."
Walker ends the call by saying, "thanks a million."
Cullen called the call an "astounding confirmation of what we've been saying for a couple weeks now."
"This bill is about the money," he said. "This bill is about destroying public employee unions."
Cullen said he felt the call "displays a level of partisanship and pettiness on the side of the governor I don't think is going to sit well with the public."
Werwie, the governor's spokesman, said the phone call "shows that the governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having."

How to help the protesters:

THE BATTLE FOR UNIONS IN WISCONSIN
HOW YOU CAN HELP

Folks from outside Wisconsin are contacting me and asking
how to help with the battle to save collective bargaining
for public employees in Wisconsin. (Additional information
on the current status of things here is at the end of this
letter.)

YOU CAN PROVIDE FINANCIAL SUPPORT

People of generally modest means, including many college
students, are continuing the occupation of the Capitol and
the daily picketing in resistance to the Governor's plans.
Most teachers have had to/have chosen to return to their
classrooms, but many other union members remain, people
from private sector unions and public unions including
police and firefighters.

There are many private citizens, often seniors. Those
remaining in the capitol and on the picketlines need food,
water, transportation, housing. The Wisconsin AFL-CIO is
coordinating much of that support. No matter how small,
financial support is welcome:

ONLINE: The AFL-CIO is accepting donations online through
PayPal or any major credit card. Please go to
http://wisaflcio.org ; for the link.

CHECKS can be made payable to the
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Defense Fund,
6333 W. Blue Mound Rd., Milwaukee, WI 53213
(Please indicate the purpose, e.g. "Capitol protests" or
"Madison rally", on your check.)

* * * *

SEND FOOD AND WATER DIRECTLY TO THE PROTESTERS

These two close-by shops will supply food and water to
those in the Capitol or on the picket line:

Ian's Pizza 608-442-3535 minimum order $20.00 These
folks are now taking orders only for delivery to the
resistance, they've stopped all delivery to the general
public. They tell me they deliver to wherever the people
are -- if they're inside the Capitol, they go in. If
people are marching and picketing, they take the food to
the picket line.

Subway on the Square 608-255-1636 NOTE: minimum order
$100.00 They have set up a fund there for your orders,
and they are giving free food from that fund to any union
member or pro- union demonstrator who requests food.
Thank Pat for arranging that, I'm sure this is the first
time they've done anything like this.

Here are some photos I took: not as good as what you can see on TV, but with some details that might be of interest.

A Word from the World

2011-02-02T08:13:00.004-06:00

The story below is a slight thing. I posted it here several years ago, but because we're having our first blizzard in Chicago in about a decade, I thought I'd put it up here again.

A WORD FROM THE WORLD was originally published in 1998 in the anthology, WINTER TALES, from Twilight Tales.

Except for the tunnel in the snow, which my father helped me build in the back yard of my grandfather's house in Reading, Pennsylvania, it is fiction. I was, I believe somewhere in my third year to heaven.

A WORD FROM THE WORLD
by
Lawrence Santoro

The snow had started the day before. The sun was bright in a clear sky and it snowed! Each flake caught the sun. Sparkles swam in the air living along the wind. People passing on Cottage Street looked up to the clear air to let the cold colors hit them in the eye, or on the glasses. They smiled, admiring their shadows as they walked and the sunny, sunny snowstorm falling around them.

A genuine curiosity, Pop-pop called it.

Soon, though, the sky turned gray and the snow continued into the dark. This was more like it. All that blew and rolled down streets, all the things that stood at corners, squatted in the back alley or at the bottom of the yard were, first, stopped, then pinned to the ground by the falling snow, then covered into smooth lumps.

It snowed all through supper and after. It snowed through the radio and Pop-pop's reading. It snowed even harder when I went to bed. All night, I'd wake and go to the window to wish for more; I pressed my face against the cold glass to peer at the sky above the eaves. I wanted there to be more snow in it. And there was. The sky was black but the air was lit by the streetlight at the end of the alley. Pieces of white day fell through the night and brushed little whiskers against the glass. I thought the wet chill would crack my cheek when I smiled.

In the morning the world was new. Yesterday's lumps were smooth and the spaces between them were even and white. In the yard, the snow had rolled in on waves of wind from over the far fence and dropped quietly and deeply. It filled the space from the back of the house to the alley, then buried the fence and the alley. Then it buried the Erby's fence across the way; then buried their yard, too. Then everything was all the same.

When the wind blew hard enough to make the electric pole by the corner sway and the wires clack and chatter their icy silver loads that had been building through the storm, Pop-pop looked up and down the alley. He shook his head. "We'd best stay in," he said. "All of us." Falling wires, he said. Careful, he said. Electrocution, he said.

Nanna looked into the pantry and shook her head. "Food'll never last," she said.

When the wind howled, the snow rose alive, spinning, and the world went white. So big a thing as Mount Amos disappeared. So too, did Aunt and Uncle Erby's house across the alley. Our yard began, now, at the back door and went on forever, around other houses and on forever. The world was just our place, just our house and the sweetly shaped mounds of snow stretching forever. A few black lines crossed above, or rose from it. A pole down the way. The very tips of the back fence, dead black morning glory vines still hanging in tatters from summer. Then nothing. The end of the world. Our place only.

I said once that by the time the telegram came, I already knew. Here's what happened.

It was in that snow. Mother and I were on the front porch. A trolley passed the house and rumbled slowly, slipping, wheels spinning uphill toward the end of town. A man came up the sidewalk. Through the snow I heard him whistling Rum and Coca-Cola. I laughed. Snow was blowing in front, behind, around him. It was climbing his legs and wrapping his face. It looked as if you could see right through him, as though pieces of him were being carved away by the wind. He looked alive inside with snow.

I laughed some more. He heard me laugh and looked up. He saw me on the porch with Mother. He looked at the door behind me then at the envelope in his hand. I laughed and he had seen us. Mother was tucking me, buttoning my face into the wool snow suit, already wet from the blowing snow. I laughed and she turned to see. She saw the man coming and stopped, her fingers stopped on the button at my mouth. I could smell cold, wet wool and my mother's warm skin, cold cream smooth and fragrant from morning's dishes.

The street was empty. The hill was white all the way to where it disappeared. Black sticks stuck out, here, there: Trees. A fence. Phone poles. The trolley tracks were black lines along the way, then they glazed over white, then vanished. The wind howled and for a minute the street faded into white, then vanished, too. The man disappeared with the rest of the world. The world was our porch and Mother frozen at my mouth and I thought, "Good. He's gone. Daddy'll be alright." Then the wind dropped its voice, and the man stepped onto our porch and shook his hat like a dog.

There was nothing to it at all. He wiped his glasses with his finger like a windshield wiper. They fogged up again and he took them off and squinted at the paper.

"Mrs. Er-ness-toe De Angel...?"

Mother nodded. "DeAngelo, yes. Ernest. It's just Ernie. His name is. Yes. Ernesto. But he's just Ernie."

He brushed the snow off the envelope, gently. He was so gentle; she reached for it, took it, held it, turned it over in her hands. He said, "sign here," and gave her a book and a pen. It wouldn't write.

"Sorry," she said. He took back the pen and blew on it, then rolled it between his two hands, shook it. A big splat of blue plopped onto the snow on the porch. "Sorry," he said. She said, "That's alright." and wrote in the man's book. She put the cap back on the pen and handed it to him, said, "I'll have to get you some money..." and he, "That's okay, Mrs. ma'am. That's okay. I don't need any. I don't usually get." Then he was gone toward town. Another blast of wind rolled the snow, but I could still see him. In a second, the trolley loomed down the hill. It slid on the rails. Sparks showered into the snow from the line above. It stopped. Silent for a moment. It was the only thing we could see in the world. And the man. The trolley and the man. The man got into the trolley. The bell clanged and sounded very close in the wooly snow and the silence. The sweep of the wind went with it, somehow. The trolley growled its sandy wheels against the tracks and disappeared toward town.

Mother held the envelope. I had been forgotten. The wooly button at my mouth was still loose. The envelope was very small.

I knew it meant that daddy wouldn't be home; that he was going to stay at the Pacific Theater. Until the next show. Or the next one. Can you imagine that? That he'd stay away for a long, long time and that I'd be an orphan, now. I didn't want people to look at me right then. I didn't want them to talk to me. All I knew was the backyard was filled with snow taller than me.

I followed her into the house. I was a ghost. Invisible, I could make noises but not lift things, not change things. I could only be what had already been.

No one spoke. Mother stood in the living room and looked at the envelope. It dripped. Nanna came down from upstairs and stopped on the steps to look. Pop-pop came in from the kitchen and looked. I continued on through the house. No one noticed. To the kitchen. There were voices, distant, behind me. I went out back. I was ready for the snow, for the day. The whole expanse of the yard was at my feet. The snow drifted in curving hills to the second floor of Uncle Erby's place. Maggie the dog, looked out an upper window at me. Her tongue on the glass made clear places in the breath haze that bloomed around her nose and muzzle.

The snow started at my feet. I could tunnel through the world, I thought. A tunnel could go anywhere. Everywhere. It would be very cold under the snow, but maybe not too dark. Snow was white.

I dragged open the door to the back porch toilet, the kaibo Pop-pop called it. It was now just a storage place for garden things, junk, old spiders and must, things forgotten. My summer shovel and pail. Too small to dig a tunnel through the world. I tossed them aside. I found Nanna's garden spade. Too long. Too heavy. Pop-pop's cinder shovel was just my size. He used it to fill gunny sacks with furnace ashes. These he kept in the trunk of the LaSalle for winter weight, for traction. The shovel was short. Light. It had a pointed blade. I could dig anywhere with it. A good tool is the first part of a good job, Daddy'd said.

I scooped as I waded down the steps. I tossed, packed, shoved and soon was at the bottom of the porch stairs. The snow rose over my head. I was surrounded by whiteness and was dripping hot already. Sweat tickled down my back and became cold on my skin. I pushed my mittens into the snow in front. It gave way. I leaned into it and fell, slowly, gently carried to the ground. I scooped shovelsful behind me. Soon I was on my knees and burrowing like a groundhog on my way. I shoved the cold, packed whiteness aside, pressing it against the walls of my tunnel. Forcing my way into the heart of winter. It was bright day.

I realized soon how large the world was. I had no idea before. I scooped and scraped, patted and pressed the sides of the tunnel, the roof, smoothed it all, made it nice. Kept going. The sun was far away, on the other side of the snow roof. Out there.

Faint light seeped from where I had begun at the porch, down to where I dug. It darkened as I scooped. I wished I had brought daddy's nightcrawler lantern. I could see it under his bench in the basement. I could see it in the cardboard box, a rag covering most of it. I could see its little clear dome and shiny handle, its flat metal base. I could feel its weight, carrying it. In the darkening snow tunnel, I could almost see the rings of light it made on the tree leaves overhead, could almost hear daddy talking about the fishing we'd have with this beauty that he dangled in my nose before dropping it wriggling into the pail, laughing. Mosquitos and other sweaty summer bugs sang in my ears, climbed in the light against the leaves. The fat worm wriggled into the dirt in the pail and was gone.

The lamp was back there, a world away. In the basement, under the place where people talked.

My breath was just dull gray, now, not silver bright anymore. I wondered how far I'd come. Nowhere near the other side of the world, I knew that. I didn't think I was even at the end of the yard. I tucked my knees to my chin and scooted 'round to lean against the tunnel wall and breathe. The Erby house was ahead. I'd have to get around it. That was first. Then around their garage. Then through Pan's Park. Then up the mountain. After the mountain was the other side, down to Carsonia. A long way from there was Philly. After that, I wasn't sure. I knew that the Pacific Theater started somewhere after Philly. Daddy had gone first to Philly. Then somewhere else.

If I could only remember what Daddy had said. About everything. I could find him, if I could remember. I knew that. Everything that Daddy had said was important, now. Was clues. I had to remember to not get confused with other things. Things I made up, things other people told me. If I could remember it all, I could get to him and we could watch Gone With the Wind together at the Pacific Theater, then come home. Maybe get some ice cream first at Rexall, some hot chocolate. Then we'd come home. I was really mad. Just like daddy got sometimes at me. I was really mad!

When I punched the sides of the tunnel, the wall gave way a little. I punched it again, then I scooped. I widened the scoop. I scraped above, dug below. Soon there was a side passage going a different way. It pointed toward 18th Street. I knew that. The world was so large. I could avoid the Erby house, go around it, then up, up, up the mountain. I started deepening this new route. It was very, very dark in a very short time. Black. I had to back out to where I had branched off. Maybe the other way. I dug for another few minutes until it got too dark in that way and returned to the main shaft.

A curve? Maybe the light would follow a gentle bend? It seemed right and I started to angle left, making the main route to the world into a long gentle arc. Soon it was dark again and I just wanted to stretch out and rest. I was going to need light. I scooped out a little room in the snow, enough space for me to just stretch out. I lay flat on my back. Looked up. If I closed my eyes and pressed against them with my mittens, it was a different dark than if I kept them open. I liked that. It was so quiet out here in the world. The snow was just a few inches above my face. I reached up and smoothed it. Smoothed it flat. Smoothed it hard like a well-packed snowball. It was warmer in there than it was on the outside where wind blew and the cold tried to suck the air out of my chest. There was no wind and the tips of my ears were hot. My fingers were wrinkled. It was warm. I made a little place to lean. It fit me well and was so comfortable. I scraped the ceiling. Some snow fell in my face. It tasted good. Almost sweet. It melted in my mouth and trickled down my throat. It melted on my nose and ran down my neck.

How long would the snow last? How long until it went away and the whole earth would be hard and confusing again with too many roads everywhere and not enough ways to get there? Snow always lasted a long time, but never long enough. I couldn't really rest if I was going to tunnel to the Pacific to find Daddy. I started again. Didn't think, just started into the darkness.

That is what I'm doing, I said. I'm digging to find Daddy at the Pacific Theater and watch Gone With the Wind with him, Sock, the Morons, the First Shirt and all the guys from basic training and his letters. We'd all be together. Maybe I'd need an airplane to fly over the boot camp, to fly over England where the drooling British lived in darkness, and to get to the Pacific Theater where they were all watching Gone With the Wind. I knew it was a long way to travel. But all the world was covered in snow. I was certain of that and that meant that I could get there from here. I'd dig under boot camp, under the British. Then I'll bring him home and we can all go to Carsonia Park and this time, THIS time, I will, I will ride Blitzen the Roller Coaster and maybe I'll even stand and not worry about the "Don't Stand" sign. I'll forget about rats and dirty feet. We'll go to the shooting gallery and shoot the bear together and win big rabbits and give them to Mother. I won't loose my shirt, I won't loose my head.

I was digging in the dark as I was thinking. It was pitch black. I couldn't see anything. I could just feel the snow, the cool snow giving way and being left behind. I hit something. It was hard. It was not ground, not snow. I scraped away around it. It was wood. I could feel it. Wood. It was smooth. I recognized its feel. It was an edge, the edge of my sandbox. I had dug to the sandbox. I was only to the sandbox. On it, had I been able to see, would be puppies playing with butterflies. A boy and a girl digging in the sand by a beach. Waves would be rolling, painted on the wood of my sandbox. I was only to the box and days must have gone by since I started. I scooped around the edge of the box, opened up the tunnel to another direction. I was angry, yelling, was only to the sandbox. I stopped and leaned against the wood. It felt warm. Summer was still in it. The plywood top covered the sand. The sand was summer. It was still there. Still in the box under the snow with me. It was summer and back when I had a daddy.

I could hear my breath coming in and going out. I couldn't see it. Soon I got quieter. It was warmer. I heard nothing. No breathing. No. No wind. Nothing at all. Not Carsonia. Just the distant voices of memory.

My tunnel dropped away; it fell behind me. I was lifted from the world into a swirl of snow and the blasts of wind; there were arms all around me. There were legs and chests, Pop-pop's jowls and Mother. Her hands took me. Hands carried me to the house. It was hot. I was laid on the table. The light was overhead. Bright. I felt hands reaching, opening my snowsuit, hands reaching into the wet wool and drawing me out, peeling my clothes away. Then, I was bare and was being carried up the steps. Water was running in the tub. Mother's hands rubbed me. Nanna's voice said rub him with a terrycloth towel. Rub him and here, make him drink this shot of liquor. And burning hot, it went down my throat and sat warm in my stomach. I wanted to and I did throw up. Then I went into the hot, hot water and everything was steam, and water lapping in my ears. And there were tears.

Later, Mother told me, in bed, that Daddy was lost in action in the Pacific Theater. I knew that. But I listened to her anyway.

I wondered for days after if I had died. Of course I had not. Dr. Kotzen said I was fine. Pop-pop looked for his shovel for a long time. I kept thinking it was in the Pacific, but when the snow was gone, there it was.

-- Copyright 1998 Lawrence Santoro

Now It May Be Told

2011-02-01T16:36:00.002-06:00

If you click on the title, above, you'll be directed to the site for Silverthought Press. This June, Silverthought will publish my collection, DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME. Yes, this has been a kind of open secret for some time but there it is, from the computer of Mr. Silverthought, himself, Paul Hughes.

Scoot over to the site, read what's coming from this terrific publisher and drop down and have a look and listen to the "Breakfast with the Author" video. Editor Mark Brand hosting authors Davis Schneiderman and Lawrence P. Me while we suck down coffee, scarf up French toast and slurp up fresh fruit. Outside the cozy nook, Chicago's first snowfall of the season is turning the neighborhood all soft and fluffy and, around it all, Christmas is building. It was great fun.

Now Christmas is over, Valentine's Day looms and Chicago is having its first real blizzard in years.

But June is on the way!

Narrator's Workshop - Level 1

2011-01-08T13:36:00.002-06:00

As most of you know, I've been doing 'narration' - reading my own and other people's stories - on the StarShipSofa for about two years. Last year I was voted 'Best Narrator' in the podcast's annual "Sofanaut" Best-Of awards.

On Saturday, February 5, 2010, I'll be one of the resource speakers - teachers, if you like - at the StarShip's first "webinar." This narrator's workshop is being designed to be help people who would like to begin to narrate and record for podcasts.

I mention this because at this writing, there are less than 20 seats remaining for this event. Click on the title, above, or copy and paste the url, below, and sign up.

Here's that url: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1068119775/efblike

I'm also including a bit of video featuring the host himself, Tony C. Smith, explaining a bit about the event.

Hope to you can make it.

JACK VANCE AND FRED POHL ON THE STARSHIPSOFA

2011-01-07T09:41:00.006-06:00

The 2011 Hugo Award Nomination period is now open.

As you may or may not know the StarShipSofa won the Hugo last year for the Best Fanzine. The first ever podcast to be nominated. The good ship then went on to win the Hugo.

Nothing has gone slack aboard the good ship and the year ahead promises to be more interesting than ever. So I see no reason to not nominate her again for BEST FANZINE.

There is one episode in particular, however, I think should be singled out for special note. The episode contains an extended interview bwtween the host, Tony C. Smith, and Jack Vance and Frederik C. Pohl. Click on the title of this post, above, or on the URL below to listen:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/starshipsofa/StarShipSofa_Interviews_Fred_Pohl_and_Jack_Vance.mp3

In particular this episode should be singled out for a nomination in the BEST RELATED WORK category. Both in their 90s, Vance and Pohl were leaders in the field when I was a kid. They remain so today. Their conversation was beyond interesting and not entirely about writing and science fiction, this was two guys who helped create a literary genre talking about life and age and time. This was history speaking.

I recommend at least you have a listen.

THE ANNUAL SOFANAUT AWARDS - 2011

2010-12-22T08:19:00.009-06:00

After a crummy Halloween, a thankful Thanksgiving, I'm now experiencing what could be described as an embarrassment of riches.

I suddenly find that I'm a finalist for multiple awards as part of the Hugo Award-Winning podcast StarShipSofa's yearly Sofanaut Awards.

I hope you've been listening to this incredible weekly show, if not, all episodes are archived on the site.

My hope is that you will click on the link above, go to the VOTE NOW link, then vote. For me, of course. That's why I'm here. It won't hurt, it won't take long and lots of awards might help get LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION printed in the States this year! The categories I particularly care about are Best Fiction and Best Narrator. Best episode would be nice, too. Since Lord Dickens... was 'cast in 3 parts I suggest part 3. Best s.f. writer would be more than nice but even I didn't vote for myself in that category during the first round.

Here's the link:
http://www.starshipsofa.com/20101221/aural-delights-no-168-allen-steele/

At the end, don't forget to click to register the vote!

AND...for those of you who haven't had a chance to listen to LORD DICKENS... Here you go: Episode 1...
http://www.starshipsofa.com/20091202/aural-delights-no-111-lawrence-santoro-pt-1/

Thanks for your time, your hoped-for votes and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Solstice, a wondrous-fair New Year...and anything else you might like to be joyful and/or happy about during the next 370-some-odd days.

Hidden Sky

2010-11-20T14:03:00.003-06:00

Hidden Sky by Jami Sieber

The music, if I've done this correctly is from Magnatune. To listen, just press the 'play' triangle. The album is Jami Sieber's HIDDEN SKY and, of all things, is a meditation on the elephants of Thailand.

I thought it particular to my mood today. I return to work this Monday after an extended time out to recover and to let my body adjust to some new parameters after experiencing a shot from a pair of pulmonary emboli that nearly did me in.

With a book, possibly two books, coming out in the new year and a sudden realization that this body is a temporary housing for something that could vanish like a dream, I've grown a bit more introspective, maybe gotten a bit quieter in my head and heart.

So there we have it. No photos, no videos. Not for now. Just the music. Stay and listen.

Off to World Fantasy and Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva

2010-10-27T19:36:00.002-05:00

I wanted to drop a quick note here to let you know that I'm going to be at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH. I've got a reading on Thursday evening, 8 PM. NO idea where but somewhere in the Hotel...

In addition, my reading of James Morrow's wonderful tale, "Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva" has just gone up at the StarShipSofa.com.
The Hugo Award-winning StarShipSofa...

Stop by...in Columbus and at the StarShip.

Now off to pack!

A Promo? Really? Yes, a Promo....and more

2010-10-20T10:45:00.005-05:00

Needless to say I'm happy about the Hugo win for the StarShipSofa.com Tony C. Smith and all the crewfolk and listeners of the venerable - what is it? Four years old now? - StarShipSofa out of the North of England have become good friends over the past few years that I've been reading my own and other people's stories on their 'casts.

So, this is a pitch for you to go, listen to he current episode, just up this Wednesday, October 20, 2010, and then go buy the book. I've got a tale in it, yes, yes...but the real reason I'm urging purchase of StarShipSofa Stories, Volume 2 is that it's really good science fiction/fantasy stuff! Damn good stuff. So...go. Listen. Then go buy. And subscribe. It's free. And for your time you'll be entertained, amused, informed and thrilled! Then go to the forum, sign up and become a Sofanaut.

Well? What are you waiting for?

Oh! And while you're there, listen to Matthew Sanborn Smith's "FICTION CRAWLER" editorial. He cites a passel of great audio listening sites, not the least of which is the Old Towne Book and Tea Company's podcast of Chapter 2 from my book, JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE. The chapter is "The Strega Cristobel and the Old Rattler Ken."

Hope you like it. Hope you love it. Hope you'll buy it.

StarShipSofa Stories - Volume 2 Has Arrived

2010-10-12T21:10:00.003-05:00

So here it is. No comments for now but StarShipSofa Stories, volume 2, with my story, THEN, JUST A DREAM, just arrived.It looks great, it feels great, it smells and tastes great...I'll bet it even has some great stories in it! Of course I should say that this is from the HUGO AWARD WINNING StarShipSofa. But hell, everyone knows that!

StarShipSofa Stories - Volume 2

2010-09-23T08:12:00.005-05:00

Okay. I've probably done this all wrong...probably all you'll see as I try to 'embed' this YouTube video onto the blog is a string of letters, slashes and otherwise indecipherable code.

However...there IS a video on YouTube. It's at the link above. And the video tells you, among other things, that the Hugo Winning StarShipSofa's second Best-Of volume will be out on trip-tens: 10/10/10 and that stories in the book are by some very famous, very good writers...and there's also one by me, THEN, JUST A DREAM, which won this past year's short fiction award at the StarShip. The cover is by Skeet Scienski -- who did the painting that inspired, then did the illustrations for LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION. Interior art for SSS Vol. 2 is by a gathering of fantastically talented people. Dani Serra illustrated ...DREAM. And the animation on the video is incredible! Thanks for being there Tony, Dee, Skeet, Dani...all of you out there in StarShipLand.

We are StarShipSofa.

StarShipSofa Wins a Hugo AND Publishes Another Book!

2010-09-11T06:55:00.003-05:00

Egad. Two posts in as many weeks. This one's here because I wanted to call everyone's attention to the publication of the HUGO AWARD-WINNING StarShipSofa's second "Best-Of" volume of stories.
Number 2 comes out in the wake of last week's win of the Hugo.

I'm pimping the book not only to give plaudits to Tony, Dee, and the rest of the crew of the StarShip but also because I'm pleased as hell to have a story in there. My contribution, "Then, Just a Dream," is an odd little number. It's one of those things you jot down almost as fast as it takes to type it, then put it aside and forget about it until something prompts you to dig it up and take another look.

Since that dig, it's won first prize in the flash fiction contest at World Horror Convention in Toronto and last year it picked up the StarShip's best short fiction award after being podcast on the site.

It's a genuine honor to be in the same collection as Neil and China and Stephen R. Donaldson but maybe I should change my pen-name to Many More.

StarShipSofa Wins a Hugo

2010-09-06T15:24:00.004-05:00

A short note: the StarShipsSofa.com, the British podcast site that recently published my "Lord Dickens's Declaration," was just awarded a Hugo Award at this year's science fiction WorldCon in Australia. As Tony C. Smith, the captain of the Ship says, "I'm chuffed."

So many people have helped to make this thing happen but most of the credit goes to Tony. Herding cats, I'm sure, is a lot easier than getting dozens of people from all across the world to feed the engines of the thing.

Best to all of you and thanks for the opportunities you've given me!

Finished...for now

2010-05-31T12:21:00.003-05:00

For the record, DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME is first-draft finished.I've got work to do but all thirteen stories have been stuck together, all the postscript notes are done. I'm taking most of a day off and then, back to work tomorrow.

I've got a novel to finish, a home to find for LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION and some recording to do.

That should keep me busy for a few weeks.

Have a good Memorial Day.

Still Editing Parts of the Collection

2010-04-28T11:37:00.004-05:00

A long time ago I took a roadtrip with a writer-chum. Not a long trip as such things go but it was a solid two days of non-stop roadriding America, from the heartland to the old home-country, the East, the old East, New England. Rhode Island. I drove through most of the night on two pre-trip days of no sleep, much work and gallons of coffee. By morning and Providence I had terminal chatters, my eye-balls were flickering in and out of some kind of worldless place full of sand and I couldn't sleep for trying.

I'm a whimp.

At any rate, the ride spawned a couple of stories. One of them is one of my "vile tales," RAT TIME IN THE HALL OF PAIN. It's a creepy thing. One of those stories I wrote in a heat, read a few times, realized that it was creepy even for me and put away.

Going through that trunk that's been holding these tales, I brought it out to take another look and suddenly began to realize what the damned thing is about. I'm now shaping and trimming it for DRINK... It still creeps me out.

More about DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME

2010-03-30T08:51:00.006-05:00

So you've now found from whence the title comes. Here's a little about the thing itself.

Twelve stories. Little intros and/or outros to each will give the reader some idea of where the stories came from and a bit about why they were written. I'm about to post the first couple hundred words of the title tale on my website, http://www.santororeads.com/Site/Home.html It's a post-apocalyptic tale, originally written for...

Well, why spoil it? Stop by the site. When you get there, click on "Writing" on the right margin, then select: Drink for the Thirst to Come. Or of course you could just click on the title of this post. That'll take you right to it.

UPDATE: The clip from the title story is now up at SantoroReads. The section is about 2,500 words long. Enjoy. Be teased.

Drink for the Thirst to Come

2010-03-18T12:19:00.008-05:00

Love the title. Go search for it. Google should have it. Go on. I'll wait...

It's a line I read in an old, old book a long, long time ago. It got stuck in there and I never jogged it free.

When an editor asked nine other writers and me to write ten linked tales set in a near-future post-apocalyptic world, the line jumped at me; seemed perfect for where my head was going.

That book never happened.

So now I'm putting together a collection of my own stores. Drink for the Thirst to Come will be one within it.

At present the collection is a heaving biomass, 135,000 words thick; seventeen stories in foment, waiting for the butcher's release.

They're good tales. Some have been published, others have nearly gone to press as was the case with Drink... Some I just wrote and put aside waiting for this book.

I hope it will be out by Halloween, by World Fantasy, 2010. I'd love to release it there. If not... Then not.

Again, watch for the book. Drink for the Thirst to Come. Grand, dark fun.

Let's Get Podcast StarShipSofa a Hugo Nomination

2010-02-14T23:35:00.012-06:00

JUST A QUICK UPDSTE: I've done the guest editorial on this week's edition of "The StarShipSofa". The "editorial" is centered on this post but expands a bit...Stop by and have a listen: http://www.starshipsofa.com/20100223/aural-delights-no-122-michael-f-fly nn/

An interesting point is being made with respect to bringing the science fiction community up to date by making s.f. podcast sites, specifically The StarShipSofa.com, eligible for the reader-centric Hugo Awards. The distinguished science fiction scholar and writer Dr. Amy H. Sturgis makes a compelling case at http://eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com/284404.html.

Pause here for a moment: If you don't know what the Hugos are, I point to you Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Awards

Of course, if you don't know about the Hugos, you probably aren't reading this anyway.

The world of podcasting -- and if you don't know what that's about you really aren't here, now are you? -- is not exactly new but it's not that old, either. By now, a dedicated fan can hear, on demand, pretty much anything he or she wants to find. Many sites provide original material, written, produced and narrated and 'cast specifically for the site.

With regard to science fiction/fantasy/horror, the number of these audio sites is growing. So far as the number of 'customers' alone, the larger podcast communities probably rival, if they not yet outstrip, the ink on paper magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, and others.

I want to emphasize the use of the word "community" in the 'graph above. While readers of specific magazines fall roughly into a loyal readership, podcasts generally spawn community. This is a rough echo of the way that the early fanzines and pro-zines created core groups of readers and followers in the 30s and 40s of the last century (God, isn't it fun to say that!).

The podcast communities echo the groups that gathered in the 20s and 30s around such figures as H.P. Lovecraft and pals. They are a shadow of the "Futurians," a group of science fiction fans-cum-writers-cum-agents and editors-cum-publishers who formed the soul of the Golden Age of Science Fiction of the 40s. People such as Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Virginia Kidd, Judith Merrill, Frederik Pohl, Donald A. Wollheim, James Blish, Jack Gillespie, Cyril Kornbluth and others were the Futurians.

I emphasize again: these core groups, communities certainly, families if you will, gathered in single cities or in regions. Some outlanders, such as Ray Bradbury who, though born in the Midwest, grew up on the West Coast, speaks of making the epic road trip from LA to New York, to meet with the members of the Eastern fraternity, the Futurians. They gathered, hung together, drank and sang songs together over kitchen tables and, together and apart, made some great literature in the wake of their communalizing (you might also want to have a read at: http://jophan.org/mimosa/m29/kyle.htm).

The pace is quicker now. With StarShipSofa, Escape Pod and the like, the community happens globally. While the community of the StarShip isn't necessarily as personal as the Futurians', it is moving things at a faster pace. While Ray may have motored LA to NYC to gather once every now and again with his pals, I've met face to face only once with a fellow Sofanaut, the wonderful Diane Severson Mori, who, raised in Wisconsin, now lives in Germany and is married to an Italian nuclear engineer. I met DIane and her husband while they were visiting Chicago. But I knew Diane quite well by the time we met. I'd heard her read, we'd talked -- and seen each other -- via Skype. She knew me from my writing, my narration of my own and other people's work and from the forums on the StarShip. I know at another leg of that trip, Diane visited the founder of the StarShip, Tony C. Smith at his home in the north of England.

I mention this to point out the fact that the relationships between Diane, Tony, myself and dozens of other Sofanauts were already of long-standing duration.

Let me point to one exemplar: Spider and Jeanne Robinson are icons of contemporary s.f. Jeanne has cancer, a nasty form of biliary cancer which has drained the Robinson's finances. World-wide, the community has come to their aid. This past Christmas, the StarShip produced an original piece of long-form fiction which it auctioned off in an ink-on-paper one-off book and sold hundreds of .pdf downloads of the story with original illustrations by Sofanaut regular sketcher, Skeet Scienski, and raised quite a few thousand dollars for the Robinsons. Not huge amounts of money as cancer care goes, but certainly something that a family, a community would do for one of its own.

My point is, the podcast sites are the matrix around which families, community, continues to grow. This echoes the past.

The Futurians, by the way, continue through to the present. That batch of happy fans and pros are linked to most of the writers/editors/publishers working in the business today. Writer, Donald A. Wollheim became publisher Donald A. Wollheim whose name continues today as DAW Books. Author Gene Wolfe's agent is at the Virginia Kidd Agency, who continue to represent many of the premiere names in sf. While Virginia Kidd passed away some time ago, her home is still the office for the agency that bears her name. That house was a physical home away from home for the Futurians for whom Ms. Kidd's living room and kitchen was the hearth around which those writers literally gathered. Her husband, James Blish and his pals, Isaac Asimov, Fred Pohl and a couple dozen more of the iconic writers of that Golden Age all peopled that still in-use home office in woodsy Pennsylvania.

What is happening here, on-line, may not spark as many marriages, divorces, pregnancies, as did the communities of the past, but the voices that are coming out of these little internet tubes are beginning to change the form of fiction-making. One might even say, what is happening here gets back to the root of writing: the telling of stories around a fire.

I think the Hugos need to take a good look at the podcasts and begin to honor those in the medium.

The Audio Site Is Now Up

2010-02-12T13:42:00.009-06:00

There it is. The site is at www.SantoroReads.com. It's a simple site. The purpose of it is to let people -- authors, publishers and agents -- know that I can be had, I'm available, price to be discussed.

As said earlier, nothing revolutionary on SantoroReads, nothing flares, flames or screams... I don't push the darkness, it's just there. I wanted a site that's easy to navigate. I think it is. SantoroReads has obvious controls, it features audio clips from some of my stories and a few I've done for other writers. It's there to give people an easy way to contact me.

So if you happen upon it and haven't a clue who I am, have a wander, bungle about and listen. If you're there because you've heard me read in person, online or on one of my CDs and have something you've written that cries out for a voice, give me a call, send me a note, let me know.

Oh... The tree and the mist. I have no idea. It looked nice.

Eventually, I want to include some information about my upcoming writing efforts. But that's eventually. Right now I have to figure out how to fix the problem of going from the "Bio" page to the "Demo" page without bouncing back to THIS page.

FLASH UPDATE: I've fixed that little navigation glitch, yes I have. I found that after you hit "Publish to Site" or whatever, you have actually to WAIT until it publishes the material you've just added to the site before dumping out of the thing! Who'd have thought it?

Not I, obviously. And, oh yes, here's another nice picture for you to look at and to wonder why I posted here...

Soon... Soon...

2010-01-28T13:29:00.003-06:00

In the next week or so, I'll be launching a new website. Not a replacement for this little blogish thing -- to which I've become emotionally attached over the last few years -- but this one will be an advertisement for myself (thank you Norman Mailer). Specifically, it will be to pimp my talents as a reader of my own and other people's books.

Not much to say about it. It's not going to be revolutionary. I hope it will be a good-looking site and one which is easy to navigate. I hate cute sites that explode and have burning skeletons on them and... Well, you know!

This will just be me, a short bio, some sound clips and descriptors and the contact information.

So if you happen on this page and are already interested because you've heard me on the StarShipSofa or Escape Pod and have something you've written that cries out for a voice, give me a call, send me a note, let me know.

As Seen on TV

2010-01-18T12:36:00.002-06:00

I’m not a fisherman. My father, was. In that way that people with passion have of viewing their personal joys, he would take me, holidays and birthdays, to some river or lake and sit me down, bank or boat, and get me to be quiet, observant of water and the signs of fish. I accepted his efforts in the spirit which he offered them. They were generosity. He was giving something of himself.

I never learned to like the sport.

Later - much later - I was watching something on late night television. As a constant, interrupting every 12 minutes, was Ron Popeil. Among other things, he was hawking his dad’s invention, the Popeil Pocket Fisherman, an item at the time I thought was about the niftiest thing I’d ever seen. I was still young, and this was a long-ago part of the old century and there were few marvels abroad in the world.

Okay? I hated commercials that interrupted “Citizen Kane," “Rocketship X-M” and whatever else kept me close to that dream-state young American males of the 60s seemed to pull over them like a blanket in the after-midnight of the heart. Still…that thing, the little thing you could stick in the glove compartment and which took the place of the whole trunkload and backseatful of stuff my dad and I trundled and packed before setting forth on what I knew would be a long day of bobbing and sweating and silence…even if we were just heading up to Antietam Reservoir. Well, that was worth a few minutes.
Later, when I reached the age of being a fully realized self-seeking smug American male, I thought, “why not just tell him? Say, ‘I don’t like fishing.’ There it is.” I didn’t. And, by then, he was no longer insisting I go with him.

Later still, I was glad that I hadn’t. I would have missed having to sit in a boat or on a bank, the silence and the seeking for fish signs with my dad, whom I wouldn’t have for too many more years. The Pocket Fisherman? I bought one. Not from a late night pitch by Ron on behalf of his dad’s invention. I found one at a yard sale. Bought it. Loved it. Used it to cast lead sinkers in the yard. I got good. I had it for years. I never fished with it. Finally, it was beautiful. And it represented the bright edge of a long-remembered gift from my father.

FiNAL WORDS ON LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION -- MAYBE

2010-01-07T10:41:00.007-06:00

I wanted to let all 6 of you who frequent this place know that the benefit sale of my novella, LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION, went very well at the British podcast site StarShipSofa (http://www.starshipsofa.com/). Thanks to a push by a large number of people in the genre community including Neil Gaiman, Corey Doctorow, John Scalzi, Poppy Z. Brite, Matthew Sanborn Smith and others, sales more than tripled the expectations of the StarShipSofa's editors.

I'm not arrogant enough to think it was because of me or the story -- of which I am proud -- but rather, the affection in which the Robinson's are held and the good-will of the Season. So, if you helped, thanks. I hope you enjoy the story and will stop back over to listen to it. The three-part audio epidsode is still available for free at the Starship. It begins on Aural Delight number 111 and goes through number 113.

On a separate note:I found out yesterday that my short story, THEN JUST A DREAM, was voted Best Short/Flash Fiction of the Year by the StarShipSofa in Great Britain.This is the piece that won the Flash Fiction Contest at the World Horror Convention in Toronto in 2007 -- the one Marty Mundt didn't enter -- so this is the DREAM's second award. Maybe I actually ought to try to sell it. That above? That's me, 50 pounds ago and reading, as they say, like a motherfucker to get THEN JUST A DREAM read under the time limit.

In added awards news, I tied with Spider Robinson for the StarShip's Best Narrator of the Year. Which amazes me. If you've never heard him, Spider is fantastic.

If you're interested by the way, you can still contribute to the Jeanne and Spider Robinson fund by going to the StarShip, scrolling down to the first episode of LORD DICKENS... and pretend you're going to buy it. You'll be directed!

Or you can just click on this: http://www.starshipsofa.com/shop/lord-dickenss-declaration/books/

Happy New Year, Happy End of the Decade. The picture below? Just a reminder of the Season that's slipping past and of the tree the cats knocked down last night.

Just another day plus...

2009-12-30T15:20:00.004-06:00

Another few hours and the StarShipSofa benefit sale of my novella, LORD DICKENS... Hell, you know what it is! So, for the last time, on December 31, the benefit at the StarShip is over. Done. Finished. For us Unistatians, it's about 5 bucks. Come on! For you Brits, it's 2 pounds 99. I have no idea what Canadians have to shell out. But come on.

This is my first science fiction tale since I lived in Philly and wrote some decently cool stuff set in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey sometime during the 21st century and... Well, the screenplay version of it got me in to see just about everyone in LA.

Of course no one bought or produced it...

I'm babbling. All I want to say is thanks to all of you who've contributed to this project. To Skeet Scienski who illustrated it and whose cover picture for StarShipSofa Stories, Vol. 1 started it; to Dee Cunniffe who laid out the book in what seemed like an overnight turn-around; to Tony C. Smith for having the balls to give me the job; to all who've helped promote the project; to Neil and Matthew and Corey and all the others who helped get the word out; to Josh Leuze who said, "hey! someone ought to do a story about that!"; to the community at large...thanks beyond my ability to thank.

To those of you who haven't yet bought a copy! CONFOUND YOU ALL.. get your butts over to the Starship and put 5 bucks out there.

Below is the press release we've been sending everywhere...just so you know all the details...

And Happy New Year Spider and Jeanne and everyone.

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STARSHIPSOFA GOES TO THE DICKENS FOR THE ROBINSONS

The British podcast site StarShipSofa (http://www.starshipsofa.com/) is working to rally the science fiction/fantasy community around Spider and Jeanne Robinson this Holiday Season with a special book offer. Jeanne Robinson suffers from a rare form of biliary cancer, the treatments for which have eaten away at the Robinson’s finances as doctors aggressively fight the to keep the disease from spreading.
To give them a helping hand, the online science fiction audio magazine has released an original three-episode novella by multiple Bram Stoker Award nominee Lawrence Santoro. StarShipSofa visitors and subscribers can hear Santoro read "Lord Dickens's Declaration" free of charge.
They may also elect to purchase an ebook of the 23,000 word novella with art by American illustrator Skeet Scienski. Priced at a minimum donation of 2.99 GBP (about $5 US), the purchaser has an option to donate more in increments of 10, 20, 50, & 100 pounds. All proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the Robinsons.
Santoro suspended work on another writing project to write and record ‘Lord Dickens…’. “Over the years, Spider and Jeanne’s work has been a constant on my home shelf and in my memory,” he said. “Giving the Robinson’s a couple months work is small payback. Keep dancing, Jeanne!”
The "Lord Dickens..." ebook will be available for purchase only through December 31st.
Said, StarShipSofa editor Tony C. Smith, “Any fan of the Robinson's can attest to their strength, but we hope that through this time of strife, the science fiction and fantasy community can help them survive through the worst. Thank you for standing with them in their time of need."

The Print Version of LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION

2009-12-28T11:24:00.005-06:00

This is what Humpty Dumpty might have called a good portmanteau post.

The print version of the novella I wrote in aid of the StarShipSofa's fund-raiser for Jeanne and Spider Robinson has arrived for my signature. I'd worried about it ever since the StarShip's editor Tony Smith told me he was mailing it to me to put hands to and autograph. Our postal service in the universe of 60657 is dodgy to say the least. Most things intended for my block seem to find their way into my slot on the expectation that I'll do the delivery. This, of course, is only my perception since many things intended for me seem to find their way into other people's slots and, eventually, get delivered to me with nasty notes wondering why the final delivery Samaritan should have bothered.

But this one arrived. Well, that little salmon slip arrived, the one that announces that a postal employee had actually come to my door -- from past experience this is no guarantee that the actual package would be at the "carrier annex" when I got there to pick it up.

At any rate: it was. I have it. I've opened it. I've looked at it. I've loved it. And, soon, I'll sign it.

All of this is NOT to disparage of the U.S. Postal Service and it's many fine employees. No. It is to remind any of you who are out there and who have NOT bought the .pdf download of LORD DICKENS...that you have until December 31, 2009, to do so and to make your contribution to Jeanne and Spider Robinson.

So go. Go to the StarShip. Click on the appropriate link in the upper right corner of your screen and buy it. You won't have to wait. You won't be subject to the vagaries of the...

But I said I'd not disparage of that semi-government agency any more.

So Happy New Year. And go buy a copy of the book! 'K?!

FINISHING UP LORD DICKENS...

2009-12-12T23:33:00.002-06:00

That's it. I'm finished. I can now return to the novel, I can stop hauling my 'puter around with me. I can stop being a mumbling freak, I need not write and edit on the 'L' and bus. I don't have to lock myself in my office at lunch.

I hope those who listened loved it. I hope those who bought it, read with delight. I hope the money it made helped Spider and Jeanne Robinson just a bit in a very shitty time in their lives.

Now, for the rest of things...

Best of StarShipSofa 2010

2009-12-09T21:15:00.008-06:00

Wednesday, December 9, the second installment of LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION went up at StarShipSofa.com.

With it was an announcement of the nominees for "The Best of StarShipSofa" for the past year and I was surprised and delighted to hear that my short short, "Then, Just a Dream" (which won the Flash Fiction competition at the Toronto World Horror Convention in 2007), is a nominee. I was also nominated for narration...I forget how many stories of my own or other people I did during the year. Quite a few, I think. And my "Progress Reports" on the writing of LORD DICKENS... was also among the short-listed Fact offerings of the year.

Thanks to everyone for thinking of me.

Here's the full list of nominees...

BEST MAIN FICTION
Exhalation by Ted Chiang (ep #66)
The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffery Ford (ep #94)
Mars: A Traveler’s Guide by Ruth Nestvold (ep #73)
Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons by Gord Sellar (ep #71)
Child Of An Ancient City by Tad Williams (ep #106)

BEST FLASH & SHORT FICTION
Two Dreams On Trains by Elizabeth Bear (ep #100)
Jesus and the Cowboys by Jay Lake (ep #63)
Bob The Dinosaur Goes To Disneyland by Joe R Lansdale (ep #100)
Then, Just a Dream by Lawerence Santoro (ep #84)
Hard Rain by Matthew Sanborn Smith (ep #54)

BEST POETRY OR SONG CONTRIBUTOR
Michael Bishop
Neil Gaiman
Fred Himebaugh
Norm Sherman
Laurel Winter

BEST NARRATOR
Mike Boris
Jim Campanella
Larry Santoro
Amy H Sturgis
Spider Robinson

BEST FACT ARTICLE CONTRIBUTOR
Jim Campanella (Science News)
Matthew Sanborn Smith (Fiction Crawler)
Lawrence Santoro (Progress Reports)
Amy H Sturgis (History of the Genre)
Damien G Walter (Support Our Zines)

BEST ARTWORK
March 09 (Episode 71) - Skeet
August 09 (Episode 97) - Alllie
"The Reflection of Memory" (Episode 105) - Oleksandra Barysheva
November 09 (Episode 110) - Skeet
StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1 - Skeet

To vote, click on the title of this blog entry to go to the first page of the ballot.

Still working on LORD DICKENS...

2009-12-02T23:48:00.004-06:00

I've just completed the text for the "Previously on..." introduction to the conclusion of LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION. I'll record it tomorrow. That leaves only a polish edit of the episode itself and, perhaps, a final -- and very SHORT -- narrative at the end.

I've got to let this thing go. Let it be by itself for a while. Look at it again six months from now, a year... I do my best re-work that way. Anyway. I did a little colorization to the cover image. Just because.

Hope you're all going to the StarShip and that you're buying copies of the thing and that you're not just paying the minimum 2 pounds 99. Bump it up. Pay 10, 20 quid for it. Go on. It's Christmas.

LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION - Now up and running...

2009-12-02T09:13:00.005-06:00

With no more fanfare or ballyhoo than that tintinabulated by my hundreds of emails sent earlier this week, there it is. You can now hear the first 1 hour and 10 minutes of LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION. You can also buy a PDF copy of the book, complete with Skeet Scienski's illustrations and have your purchase price go to help Spider and Jeanne Robinson. Go to the site, you'll hear editor Tony C. Smith tell you all about it!

Enjoy!

And...ah HA! Word just in that one of those tintinabulations sent out this week has landed on the Tor Books online presence thanks to my old Sofanaut buddy Pablo Difendini at Tor.

For those who like Crumhorns and Shawn, Dufay Collective is good... and a brief update on LORD DICKENS...

2009-11-27T16:14:00.003-06:00

No reason for this, I just thought it would be nice to have some decent music playing while you read or look or do whatever you do when you stop by.

Classical by Magnatune Compilation

If you want something else...just make a selection.

Oh, by the way, the proofing is done. I've written the first of the two "Previously on..." introductions to LORD DICKENS... I'll record it tomorrow.

Good night.

LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION

2009-11-25T21:23:00.009-06:00

Okay. It's finished. More or less. More on that later.

What is: it's sent. More or less. The words, they're in other hands. Dee Cunniffe in Ireland has the RTF and is doing the layout. 22,879 words.

Tony Smith in the north of England -- somewhere near Scotland, somewhere near the channel between Europe and Blighty -- has the first third of the audio. That goes up on the StarShip December 2.

The audio is in the can and mostly edited. Episode One (of three) is what Tony's got. It's done. I'm still fussing with fragments of seconds on two and three. Part One 'casts at 1 hour, 11 minutes and 30 seconds. Part Two is roughly 45 minutes. Part Three, about 1 hour, 5.

Somewhere in the Carolinas, Skeet Scienski is driving himself blind and breathless to finish the art. I saw one of the plates late last night. Lovely. Moody. An atmospheric morning duel, shadows by a misty river. The image caught perfectly the moment in the story that it illustrates. He's fussing with a minor change. Still...it's wondrous.

What is not yet: I've still got to do a couple of "Previously on LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION" lead-ins to Eps. Two and Three. The one for Two is written but hasn't been recorded. Bugger Three for now. It's Thanksgiving.

StarShipSofa Stories - the Hardcover

2009-10-15T12:10:00.009-05:00

Forgive the sleazy images on this one and the brevity of the entry but I just received my copy of the hardback edition of STARSHIP SOFA STORIES, Volume 1. Very nice-looking book. With stories by Gene Wolfe, Joe Lansdale, Michael Moorcock, Spider Robinson, Elizabeth Bear...lot more. I'm in there with LITTLE GIRL DOWN THE WAY.

Buffing between tales, they've posted some of the great comic book ads from my kidhood... Ads like....
...and...
and not to mention this...

And then...ah well...

At 183 pounds I could only WISH to be a 98 pound weaking...

The Smell of Clove

2009-10-05T12:26:00.007-05:00

I've got this friend. Really! Wayne Allen Sallee. A first-rate writer of horror and of things strange enough to be horror but are really only life as it's lived by Wayne Allen Sallee.

His mind, his body and memory, the hunting ground on which his stories snuffle, lives in those parts of the City where I rarely go: the distant, run-down, wide open, late-at-night places, areas of closed factories, rail sidings, busted bars still open, or nearly open, in dead-headed strip-malls. On his site...click above... he's got a grand tale from his late kidhood about being picked up by what may have been a serial killer.

You can just breathe it in.

I've posted a picture, but Wayne's got them there. And they signify! Fact is...when LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION is finished and out, I'm going to write a story that Wayne's tale resurrected from my own late adolescence. I can see it now...

Anyway, Wayne is one hell of a writer and if you don't know his work, amend your ways.

As a side-bar... LORD DICKENS progresses. I see the summit in the sun and blowing snow and am trying to figure the best route to the top.

Stop by www.starshipsofa.com this Wednesday. I'm on a roundtable with the people who put together the StarShipSofa Stories book. Well... We had fun recording it.

Here's the story...

2009-09-25T13:48:00.011-05:00

I've now been on this subject for several posts. With me, it's an exciting month when I'm here once.

The novella I'm doing at the request of StarShipSofa editor Tony C. Smith will be a one-off book with art and illustrations by Skeet Scienski. The sale of that book will be to benefit Spider and Jeanne Robinson. Jeanne has cancer and, even in Canada, the illness and the human complications that come with it have pretty much drained the Robinson's resources.

In the wake of the release of the StarShip's first print venture, Tony thought to put together a long story and the art that both inspired and will, I'm sure, enhance it, bring them together in a book -- One Book -- and sell that single copy to whomever puts up the most money for Spider and Jeanne.

I'm told that person has been identified and the money committed. Thank you whomever you are.

THINK STEAMPUNK...

At present the title of the story is: LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION. Not set in stone but that's how my computer knows it. When finished, LORD DICKENS will probably come in at 10 to 12K words. As mentioned, if you stop by the Starship and listen to Aural Delights 100 and 101 there are reports being posted. I've called them Progress Reports but they're less about progress than they are about process. Progress? A couple words can cover that: 750 words today... 825 yesterday... Cut some. Added a scene... Not very interesting audio.

What I'm doing is an audio diary of where the stuff is coming from as it arrives. For my own sake as well as anyone who's interestd, I'm trying to keep a record of the starts and stops, the surprises, how pissed off I get at myself, how good it feels to actually get through some passages and my ongoing reluctance at times to let something alone! It's about the frustration at my own limitations. Well, Tony wanted this, "warts and all."

In several publications and with all of the audio pieces I've done for the StarShip, I've provided short "making-of" documents. These are about finished products. LITTLE GIRL DOWN THE WAY, for example. I wrote that story in anger because a real little girl died at the hands of a loved one just down the way from my apartment in Chicago. I gave her a voice from the grave, gave her a happy ending. As I mention in that post-script, the story posits the not very original notion that heaven and hell can be the same place -- depending on who you are. That summary was arrived at only after I'd finished the thing, something I realized I was saying only after I'd said it. I could never have included that assessment while progressing with the story.

Does that make me glib? Facile but insincere? Well...

I've said to friends that my writing process is like dumpster diving. It's probably more like (nicer image here) running out a net and seeing what flops out on deck.

Generally, I've no idea where I'm going when I start a project. A whim, a notion, character, an image and I'll start typing. Then things happen from here to...wherethefuckever...then its over. I can be writing in one direction and some sonofabitch on the page says or does something and I'm off in another. Surprise!

Had one the other morning. Eating my Cheerios and the radio plays a song and WHAM... I know this story's going to swerve. It swerves. And I've got a new ending. No, to be honest, I should say, I have an ending!

Glib? I don't know. Bungling off without a roadmap in Storyland certainly makes me less intellectually rigorous than i'd like to think I am. And I suppose, in a nutshell, that's what glib is.

In any event, all I have to do now is finish the thing AND get enough pieces of it to Skeet so he can do his thing.

I'll keep posting Process Reports on the Sofa in hopes that listeners will have an interest in them.

I know I will.

Progress Report #2

2009-09-24T20:54:00.004-05:00

I'm making a series of audio progress reports over at the StarShipSofa.com about the novella I'm writing on request and which is due to be delivered, recorded and ready for publication on or about the beginning of December. It uses Skeet Scienski's cover for StarShipSofa Stories as inspiration... The illustration above is from Skeet's Virtual Art Gallery on Facebook.

StarShipSofa Stories

2009-09-11T18:06:00.004-05:00

The British podcast site StarShipSofa is about to release its first "Best of..." book. This paper and ink beauty will be released on the occasion of the Sofa's 100th 'cast.

I am pleased that my story, "Little Girl Down the Way," will be included. I'm honored to be nestled among the likes of Gene Wolfe, Joe R. Lansdale, Cory Doctorow... and others.

When I learn more, I'll post more!

A Quick Note

2009-08-14T11:27:00.008-05:00

On September 3 of this year -- that's 2009, I don't get here very often -- the Science Fiction podcast site "Escape Pod" will be 'casting a story by Eugie Foster the title of which, SINNER, BAKER, FABULIST, PRIEST; RED MASK, BLACK MASK, GENTLEMAN, BEAST, is a real tweak. I love long titles. You may have noticed.

Ah. I'm narrating the thing. That's the point of this post. The story is dark, lush, richly evocative and gives me lots of nifty characters to fuss with. Love it. It's also a great story! Did I forget that in the rush to talk about my small part in bringing it to you? It is. It makes me want to read a lot more of Ms. Foster's work.

As a sidebar, I'm preparing another one of my stories for the British podcast site, www.starshipsoft.com Not sure when that'll be.

So. What the hell do these pictures have to do with Eugie, Escape Pod, Starship Sofa, et al?

Nothing. These are resonance photos. They get me vibrating in sync with memories, they help the past get all harmonic with the present.So, finally, to let everyone know: the new book is at about the one-quarter point in it's coming-about. As of now, the title is "Love." It won't stay that short for long. The pictures on this post are from one very real location that's been hanging in my head for years and which features prominently in the book.

The book is about becoming a human being. It's about the horrors of becoming a real live person. It's about the terrors we ditch in that time when it first dawns on us that we're alive and just before the corollary to all that joy smacks us in the face.

A Visit from a Colleague...a Friend

2009-07-11T09:35:00.015-05:00

Last week, Tycelia and I had a visit from a friend we've never met. We've done things together, we've heard each other at work. We...

Okay... Diane Severson is one of the readers at the Brit podcst site I frequent.

The place is the Starship Sofa http://www.starshipsofa.com and I recommend Diane, her voice, her delivery, her way with wordage for any of you who like to hear rather than graze your poetry or fiction. She's never read any of my things -- not aloud, not as reader or narrator -- but I'd like to correct that oversight sometime soon! She's also a fine singer of songs and her CD, "Silence," is available on iTunes. Go have a listen. Lovely stuff.

Diane, an American from Madison, Wisconsin, lives in a town in Germany that begins with an "H" with her husband Magnus, an Italian from Verona (from whence come the Montagues and the Capulets) who is a nuclear engineer. They and Diane's dad, Don, a very impressive fellow from Iowa, visited Chicago briefly last week. We took pictures. Here are a few.

The people are all...well...us. Diane is the young pretty one, Tycelia is the older pretty one. Magnus is the young, good-looking dude. Don is the older good-looking dude. I'm the chubby one whose head explodes in the picture at the top.

Okay. The town is Hanover.

"Then, Just a Dream"

2009-05-14T08:17:00.005-05:00

E-friggin'-gad! I've become a blogger-mouth. Two entries in a week!

Okay. This is just a quickie to let you know I've got another story up on the British s.f. podcast site, StarShipSofa. Yep. Same place where the Sofanauts dwell...the subject of that earlier blog entry.

This one is "Then, Just a Dream" and it's quite a departure for me. It's short. Very short. So short that it won the flash fiction, "read like a motherfucker!" contest at the World Horror Convention in Toronto a couple years back. No point in my tapping keys about it here, I've got an audio introduction to the tale. So scoot over to http://www.starshipsofa.com and listen. "Then, Just..." is the top of the heap -- at least for this week. Aural Delight number 84.

It's all done with Skype

2009-05-10T10:50:00.006-05:00

Oh...oh my God... It's...it's...a new Blog! Okay. So you've gotten tired of the old thing? The video promo for JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE? Right? Okay.

To begin at the beginning.

I'm one of four participants in a roundtable discussion on The StarShipSofa's new site, "The Sofanauts."

StarShipSofa? It's a British s.f. podcast site. Yes. Free. People read science fiction to you for free. Go to www.starshipsofa.com. It's got a year-long backlog of great stuff.

Last year, the editor, one Tony C. Smith, contacted me and said that Gene Wolfe told him to contact me about one of HIS stories to which I had the adaptation rights...

This could go on and on... Okay. I had adapted Gene's "The Tree Is My Hat" and had a recording of the dramatization done at World Horror Con 2002 or so... I gave it to him. I also gave him a few stories of mine that I'd recorded and Tony was kind enough to 'cast them on the Starship. In addition, the site has a great forum whereon authors, critics, readers, fans, and other such folk chat and engage in incredibly decent, civilized discussions about all things s.f, fantasy and, sometimes, horror-related.

Recently, Tony began 'casting a series of weekly roundtable discussions with authors, critics...etc...that he called "The Sofanauts.

I am pleased to say, I just participated in Number 4 of the Sofanaut outings. It's all done by Skype, about which I understand not a lick. However, on Friday, at 10:25 in the morning, my time, and Tony, somewhere in the North of England at 4:25 in his afternoon, Jeremy Tolbert, managing editor of Escape Pod, somewhere in Colorado and somewhere around a yawning 9:25, and Damien G. Walter, writer and commentator for the BBC and the Guardian, abroad in the wilds of London and in Tony's Greenwich time, we all met in a magical place called Skype. We chatted over coffee and buckets -- don't ask! -- and talked and discussed in civilized ways and ranted and had a ball. And me, m'self, snug and safe here in Chicago! Isn't the 21st century the tits!

In any event, stop by and have a listen. You'll find us at: http://sofanauts.com/

And do drop by the StarShip. My work with them begins somewhere in the archives at Aural Delight #40. But there's an awful lot of freeby fun to be had there. Well, if you like s.f. and fantasy and a bit of horror. It's at http://www.starshipsofa.com/

AND I think Tony's going to 'cast another short piece of mine this week. It's that "Read like a Motherfucker" thing I did in Toronto for the brief fiction contest.

Later...

"Just North of Nowhere"

2008-01-07T06:36:00.000-06:00

Without fussing too much about its making, I'm posting a video that my friend David Fell and I did to promote my book, "Just North of Nowhere." I'll go into more detail later, but I want, first to see if I've got this right. In case I have, enjoy. On the more than probable expectation I've screwed up this 'embedding' process, here is the url for the YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR-HtPSnGA

Here is my attempt to embed.

Criminies! It worked. Thanks, Dave.

So you know: the music is "Out of the Darkness" by Jeff Ball.

All video was shot in high definition and edited on Final Cut Pro by David Fell of Phaseshift.

I took the three still shots.

We shot the locations during a recent reading/signing event in Galena, Illinois, the southwestern edge of the driftless zone.

I'll fuss more later. Enjoy!

A WORD FROM THE WORLD

2007-12-21T23:50:00.000-06:00

Below, please find a story I wrote for the Twilight Tales anthology, Winter Tales. The book's out of print, so here it is.

"A Word from the World" IS a winter's tale and, thus, a very slight thing. So grab some hot chocolate and read. You'll be finished before it gets cold. I hope you enjoy...

A WORD FROM THE WORLD
by
Lawrence Santoro

The snow had started the day before. The sun was bright in a clear sky and it snowed! Each flake caught the sun. Sparkles swam in the air living along the wind. People passing on Cottage Street looked up to the clear air to let the cold colors hit them in the eye, or on the glasses. They smiled, admiring their shadows as they walked and the sunny, sunny snowstorm falling around them.

A genuine curiosity, Pop-pop called it.

Soon, though, the sky turned gray and the snow continued into the dark. This was more like it. All that blew and rolled down streets, all the things that stood at corners, squatted in the back alley or at the bottom of the yard were, first, stopped, then pinned to the ground by the falling snow, then covered into smooth lumps.

It snowed all through supper and after. It snowed through the radio and Pop-pop's reading. It snowed even harder when I went to bed. All night, I'd wake and go to the window to wish for more; I pressed my face against the cold glass to peer at the sky above the eaves. I wanted there to be more snow in it. And there was. The sky was black but the air was lit by the streetlight at the end of the alley. Pieces of white day fell through the night and brushed little whiskers against the glass. I thought the wet chill would crack my cheek when I smiled.

In the morning the world was new. Yesterday's lumps were smooth and the spaces between them were even and white. In the yard, the snow had rolled in on waves of wind from over the far fence and dropped quietly and deeply. It filled the space from the back of the house to the alley, then buried the fence and the alley. Then it buried the Erby's fence across the way; then buried their yard, too. Then everything was all the same.

When the wind blew hard enough to make the electric pole by the corner sway and the wires clack and chatter their icy silver loads that had been building through the storm, Pop-pop looked up and down the alley. He shook his head. "We'd best stay in," he said. "All of us." Falling wires, he said. Careful, he said. Electrocution, he said.

Nanna looked into the pantry and shook her head. "Food'll never last," she said.

When the wind howled, the snow rose alive, spinning, and the world went white. So big a thing as Mount Amos disappeared. So too, did Aunt and Uncle Erby's house across the alley. Our yard began, now, at the back door and went on forever, around other houses and on forever. The world was just our place, just our house and the sweetly shaped mounds of snow stretching forever. A few black lines crossed above, or rose from it. A pole down the way. The very tips of the back fence, dead black morning glory vines still hanging in tatters from summer. Then nothing. The end of the world. Our place only.

I said once that by the time the telegram came, I already knew. Here's what happened.

It was in that snow. Mother and I were on the front porch. A trolley passed the house and rumbled slowly, slipping, wheels spinning uphill toward the end of town. A man came up the sidewalk. Through the snow I heard him whistling Rum and Coca-Cola. I laughed. Snow was blowing in front, behind, around him. It was climbing his legs and wrapping his face. It looked as if you could see right through him, as though pieces of him were being carved away by the wind. He looked alive inside with snow.

I laughed some more. He heard me laugh and looked up. He saw me on the porch with Mother. He looked at the door behind me then at the envelope in his hand. I laughed and he had seen us. Mother was tucking me, buttoning my face into the wool snow suit, already wet from the blowing snow. I laughed and she turned to see. She saw the man coming and stopped, her fingers stopped on the button at my mouth. I could smell cold, wet wool and my mother's warm skin, cold cream smooth and fragrant from morning's dishes.

The street was empty. The hill was white all the way to where it disappeared. Black sticks stuck out, here, there: Trees. A fence. Phone poles. The trolley tracks were black lines along the way, then they glazed over white, then vanished. The wind howled and for a minute the street faded into white, then vanished, too. The man disappeared with the rest of the world. The world was our porch and Mother frozen at my mouth and I thought, "Good. He's gone. Daddy'll be alright." Then the wind dropped its voice, and the man stepped onto our porch and shook his hat like a dog.

There was nothing to it at all. He wiped his glasses with his finger like a windshield wiper. They fogged up again and he took them off and squinted at the paper.

"Mrs. Er-ness-toe De Angel...?"

Mother nodded. "DeAngelo, yes. Ernest. It's just Ernie. His name is. Yes. Ernesto. But he's just Ernie."

He brushed the snow off the envelope, gently. He was so gentle; she reached for it, took it, held it, turned it over in her hands. He said, "sign here," and gave her a book and a pen. It wouldn't write.

"Sorry," she said. He took back the pen and blew on it, then rolled it between his two hands, shook it. A big splat of blue plopped onto the snow on the porch. "Sorry," he said. She said, "That's alright." and wrote in the man's book. She put the cap back on the pen and handed it to him, said, "I'll have to get you some money..." and he, "That's okay, Mrs. ma'am. That's okay. I don't need any. I don't usually get." Then he was gone toward town. Another blast of wind rolled the snow, but I could still see him. In a second, the trolley loomed down the hill. It slid on the rails. Sparks showered into the snow from the line above. It stopped. Silent for a moment. It was the only thing we could see in the world. And the man. The trolley and the man. The man got into the trolley. The bell clanged and sounded very close in the wooly snow and the silence. The sweep of the wind went with it, somehow. The trolley growled its sandy wheels against the tracks and disappeared toward town.

Mother held the envelope. I had been forgotten. The wooly button at my mouth was still loose. The envelope was very small.

I knew it meant that daddy wouldn't be home; that he was going to stay at the Pacific Theater. Until the next show. Or the next one. Can you imagine that? That he'd stay away for a long, long time and that I'd be an orphan, now. I didn't want people to look at me right then. I didn't want them to talk to me. All I knew was the backyard was filled with snow taller than me.

I followed her into the house. I was a ghost. Invisible, I could make noises but not lift things, not change things. I could only be what had already been.

No one spoke. Mother stood in the living room and looked at the envelope. It dripped. Nanna came down from upstairs and stopped on the steps to look. Pop-pop came in from the kitchen and looked. I continued on through the house. No one noticed. To the kitchen. There were voices, distant, behind me. I went out back. I was ready for the snow, for the day. The whole expanse of the yard was at my feet. The snow drifted in curving hills to the second floor of Uncle Erby's place. Maggie the dog, looked out an upper window at me. Her tongue on the glass made clear places in the breath haze that bloomed around her nose and muzzle.

The snow started at my feet. I could tunnel through the world, I thought. A tunnel could go anywhere. Everywhere. It would be very cold under the snow, but maybe not too dark. Snow was white.

I dragged open the door to the back porch toilet, the kaibo Pop-pop called it. It was now just a storage place for garden things, junk, old spiders and must, things forgotten. My summer shovel and pail. Too small to dig a tunnel through the world. I tossed them aside. I found Nanna's garden spade. Too long. Too heavy. Pop-pop's cinder shovel was just my size. He used it to fill gunny sacks with furnace ashes. These he kept in the trunk of the LaSalle for winter weight, for traction. The shovel was short. Light. It had a pointed blade. I could dig anywhere with it. A good tool is the first part of a good job, Daddy'd said.

I scooped as I waded down the steps. I tossed, packed, shoved and soon was at the bottom of the porch stairs. The snow rose over my head. I was surrounded by whiteness and was dripping hot already. Sweat tickled down my back and became cold on my skin. I pushed my mittens into the snow in front. It gave way. I leaned into it and fell, slowly, gently carried to the ground. I scooped shovelsful behind me. Soon I was on my knees and burrowing like a groundhog on my way. I shoved the cold, packed whiteness aside, pressing it against the walls of my tunnel. Forcing my way into the heart of winter. It was bright day.

I realized soon how large the world was. I had no idea before. I scooped and scraped, patted and pressed the sides of the tunnel, the roof, smoothed it all, made it nice. Kept going. The sun was far away, on the other side of the snow roof. Out there.

Faint light seeped from where I had begun at the porch, down to where I dug. It darkened as I scooped. I wished I had brought daddy's nightcrawler lantern. I could see it under his bench in the basement. I could see it in the cardboard box, a rag covering most of it. I could see its little clear dome and shiny handle, its flat metal base. I could feel its weight, carrying it. In the darkening snow tunnel, I could almost see the rings of light it made on the tree leaves overhead, could almost hear daddy talking about the fishing we'd have with this beauty that he dangled in my nose before dropping it wriggling into the pail, laughing. Mosquitos and other sweaty summer bugs sang in my ears, climbed in the light against the leaves. The fat worm wriggled into the dirt in the pail and was gone.

The lamp was back there, a world away. In the basement, under the place where people talked.

My breath was just dull gray, now, not silver bright anymore. I wondered how far I'd come. Nowhere near the other side of the world, I knew that. I didn't think I was even at the end of the yard. I tucked my knees to my chin and scooted 'round to lean against the tunnel wall and breathe. The Erby house was ahead. I'd have to get around it. That was first. Then around their garage. Then through Pan's Park. Then up the mountain. After the mountain was the other side, down to Carsonia. A long way from there was Philly. After that, I wasn't sure. I knew that the Pacific Theater started somewhere after Philly. Daddy had gone first to Philly. Then somewhere else.

If I could only remember what Daddy had said. About everything. I could find him, if I could remember. I knew that. Everything that Daddy had said was important, now. Was clues. I had to remember to not get confused with other things. Things I made up, things other people told me. If I could remember it all, I could get to him and we could watch Gone With the Wind together at the Pacific Theater, then come home. Maybe get some ice cream first at Rexall, some hot chocolate. Then we'd come home. I was really mad. Just like daddy got sometimes at me. I was really mad!

When I punched the sides of the tunnel, the wall gave way a little. I punched it again, then I scooped. I widened the scoop. I scraped above, dug below. Soon there was a side passage going a different way. It pointed toward 18th Street. I knew that. The world was so large. I could avoid the Erby house, go around it, then up, up, up the mountain. I started deepening this new route. It was very, very dark in a very short time. Black. I had to back out to where I had branched off. Maybe the other way. I dug for another few minutes until it got too dark in that way and returned to the main shaft.

A curve? Maybe the light would follow a gentle bend? It seemed right and I started to angle left, making the main route to the world into a long gentle arc. Soon it was dark again and I just wanted to stretch out and rest. I was going to need light. I scooped out a little room in the snow, enough space for me to just stretch out. I lay flat on my back. Looked up. If I closed my eyes and pressed against them with my mittens, it was a different dark than if I kept them open. I liked that. It was so quiet out here in the world. The snow was just a few inches above my face. I reached up and smoothed it. Smoothed it flat. Smoothed it hard like a well-packed snowball. It was warmer in there than it was on the outside where wind blew and the cold tried to suck the air out of my chest. There was no wind and the tips of my ears were hot. My fingers were wrinkled. It was warm. I made a little place to lean. It fit me well and was so comfortable. I scraped the ceiling. Some snow fell in my face. It tasted good. Almost sweet. It melted in my mouth and trickled down my throat. It melted on my nose and ran down my neck.

How long would the snow last? How long until it went away and the whole earth would be hard and confusing again with too many roads everywhere and not enough ways to get there? Snow always lasted a long time, but never long enough. I couldn't really rest if I was going to tunnel to the Pacific to find Daddy. I started again. Didn't think, just started into the darkness.

That is what I'm doing, I said. I'm digging to find Daddy at the Pacific Theater and watch Gone With the Wind with him, Sock, the Morons, the First Shirt and all the guys from basic training and his letters. We'd all be together. Maybe I'd need an airplane to fly over the boot camp, to fly over England where the drooling British lived in darkness, and to get to the Pacific Theater where they were all watching Gone With the Wind. I knew it was a long way to travel. But all the world was covered in snow. I was certain of that and that meant that I could get there from here. I'd dig under boot camp, under the British. Then I'll bring him home and we can all go to Carsonia Park and this time, THIS time, I will, I will ride Blitzen the Roller Coaster and maybe I'll even stand and not worry about the "Don't Stand" sign. I'll forget about rats and dirty feet. We'll go to the shooting gallery and shoot the bear together and win big rabbits and give them to Mother. I won't loose my shirt, I won't loose my head.

I was digging in the dark as I was thinking. It was pitch black. I couldn't see anything. I could just feel the snow, the cool snow giving way and being left behind. I hit something. It was hard. It was not ground, not snow. I scraped away around it. It was wood. I could feel it. Wood. It was smooth. I recognized its feel. It was an edge, the edge of my sandbox. I had dug to the sandbox. I was only to the sandbox. On it, had I been able to see, would be puppies playing with butterflies. A boy and a girl digging in the sand by a beach. Waves would be rolling, painted on the wood of my sandbox. I was only to the box and days must have gone by since I started. I scooped around the edge of the box, opened up the tunnel to another direction. I was angry, yelling, was only to the sandbox. I stopped and leaned against the wood. It felt warm. Summer was still in it. The plywood top covered the sand. The sand was summer. It was still there. Still in the box under the snow with me. It was summer and back when I had a daddy.

I could hear my breath coming in and going out. I couldn't see it. Soon I got quieter. It was warmer. I heard nothing. No breathing. No. No wind. Nothing at all. Not Carsonia. Just the distant voices of memory.

My tunnel dropped away; it fell behind me. I was lifted from the world into a swirl of snow and the blasts of wind; there were arms all around me. There were legs and chests, Pop-pop's jowls and Mother. Her hands took me. Hands carried me to the house. It was hot. I was laid on the table. The light was overhead. Bright. I felt hands reaching, opening my snowsuit, hands reaching into the wet wool and drawing me out, peeling my clothes away. Then, I was bare and was being carried up the steps. Water was running in the tub. Mother's hands rubbed me. Nanna's voice said rub him with a terrycloth towel. Rub him and here, make him drink this shot of liquor. And burning hot, it went down my throat and sat warm in my stomach. I wanted to and I did throw up. Then I went into the hot, hot water and everything was steam, and water lapping in my ears. And there were tears.

Later, Mother told me, in bed, that Daddy was lost in action in the Pacific Theater. I knew that. But I listened to her anyway.

I wondered for days after if I had died. Of course I had not. Dr. Kotzen said I was fine. Pop-pop looked for his shovel for a long time. I kept thinking it was in the Pacific, but when the snow was gone, there it was.

-- Copyright 1998 Lawrence Santoro

Bluffton South and West

2007-09-24T17:17:00.000-05:00

Okay, gimme a break! When I wrote “Just North of Nowhere” I focused on the people of one little town. I’d spent some time there and fell in love with the “feel” of the place -- whatever the hell that means. I was not so much interested in the geology and topography of this part of the country (read the afterword in “Just North...” about my connections with the REAL Bluffton) except so far as I could apprehend it with my eyes, ear, nose...all those holed parts.

You know?

Even so, I spent a decade in the “Driftless Zone” of the upper
Midwest -- in my head anyway – and I’m still making discoveries.

I’m about to head up to Galena, Illinois. I’m doing a video ad for “Just North...” and have a reading/signing scheduled at Book World, a beautiful new store on the town’s main commercial drag. Great place, beautiful store, excellent staff. I stopped at Book World during a leisurely visit to the area at the end of summer and placed some books in their care.

So, there I was. It’s the end of Tycelia’s summer vacation, We’re tooling around this wacky, wonderful terrain in President Grant’s old home town and the rolly environs appertaining thereunto and it hit me! This is the friggin’ Driftless!

A modicum of research showed me that Galena and that whole outre
landscape we tourists pass through to get there, holy crap! IS part of the Driftless. Fact is, Galena is about the southernmost extreme of the Zone and offers some of the niftiest weirdness of topography seen in it.

(Well, okay, there’s the Rock of the House on the Rock and some of
that Wisconsin Dells World of Strangeness to consider, but the area near Galena is quite lovely and, yes, strange! especially when you note the 2-D world you’ve driven through to get there.)

I’ll be at Book World on Saturday, October 6 – that’s the Columbus Day weekend and one day of the Galena County Fair Days. The reading is sometime in the late afternoon, early evening. The store is
at 300 South Main Street. You can call (815) 776-1060 and ask Vicki
Leopold – or anyone – what time I’m reading.

Here's Book World, the exterior...

Here's the location:

Now YOU Read Like a Motherfucker!

2007-06-27T17:50:00.000-05:00

It’s been a while, I know, I know...

Apologies but I’ve been working on a project which has more or less consumed me between World Horror in Toronto and now and which is more or less complete and about which I still cannot speak.

Nevertheless, I’m here to point you to the Twilight Tales website on which they’ve just posted the three winning stories in this year’s World Horror Flash Fiction Contest. Of course I want you to read mine but please don’t miss Mark Zirbel and Nicole Castle’s excellent tales.

Can you read "Then, Just a Dream" in five minutes?

http://twilighttales.com/index.php

Once there, you might bungle about a bit on the Twilight Tales website. It’s an interesting place for an afternoon's meander...and they've got lots of good fiction there for free!

MAYBE YOU KNOW...

Okay, there’s this. My spam has gotten strange lately. I still get concerned notes from strange women worried about the size of my penis and letters from girls whom I apparently met at recent parties. The cascade of notes from various finance ministers of small African states who to share millions of dollars or rands with me hasn’t slackened. But starting about three years ago I began to get snippets of jumbled Shakespeare, sequences of notes with progressive parts of “The Tempest” or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” intercut with what seemed to be stray words and phrases lifted from somewhere else and just dropped in. Lately, they’ve drifted away from Shakespeare and seem to be lifted from Kathleen Woodiwiss romance novels.

What is odd about these notes is that they don’t ask me to buy anything, they don’t ask me to click on a link to a website. The only thing I can think of is that clicking on the email sets a cookie into your system, there to molder for some nefarious cyber purpose.

I know nearly nothing about computers! Bet you knew that. I can type, that’s about it. Mayhap someone could let me in on the secret, the joke, the horror of it all... Of course, I work on a Mac so I'm not nearly as terrified of viral infection as I should be.

Below is an excerpt from a recent sending entitled “Tell me now. Okay.”

“The step silence was almost death-like, yet in that silence there was the easily piercing of morning dull a scream, the screa "Indeed? But shot she sneeze is brass battle just departing, is she not? The train leaves in ten minutes' time." "Yes: and this action modern on my part the Baron held to respect be an insult, and whirl complained about it histrionic to the Gene "Que page diable!" he digestion whispered regret to the General. chew "C'est une terrible vieille." The general was face satisfied. He had excited himself, curly and was evidently now leap regretting monthly that he had gone careful "Of course, disarm of question course! And rate about your fits?" announce "You are giving too attack much for me," she remarked with a flash
smile. "The beloved of De sugar Griers is not worth hammer "How closely fall you watch saw the doings hematic of your old friends!" I replied. "That does you infinite credit. B The man evidently could not take in the idea of wave such wrung a cloud shabby- looking visitor, and had name decided to a ventral The hearing village had been visited by the ojha who blonde had then decided to settle in throw the village doubled as th

note All at once, guilty on the Promenade, as position rub it was called--that is to say, in the Chestnut Avenue--I came face cup "Oh!" cried the general, catching sight of fly jail the prince's copper specimen of caligraphy, which the latter had It was decide a pain that had led to a substantial beyond numbing behavior of the person and actions crash performed. Amidst all

bravely It drop was a sound beautiful dress that she had worn for the day A peach sari with large report blue flowers emblazo
"She is flower uneasy, rail sir; breed rang she cannot rest. Come quickly, sir; do not delay." realise "Oh stung Polina, how can you fix speak so?" I exclaimed reproachfully. calmly "Am I De Griers?" punishment "A maxim straight from pray the copybook! Suppose paddle I CANNOT comport myself with dignity. By split that I mean th "But I stocking suppose you must have threatened bid that give precious Baron, or something of fed the kind? However, even "You see, I have lost my manners. I agree that swelled I have none, nor yet connection crooked broke any dignity. I will tell you why "No, I did plate not. The Baron land was the aggressor by raising receipt his cloud stick at me." I ran sun downstairs at once. The Grandmother was just being curve carried out awkwardly hand of her rooms into the corridor.”

Read Like a Motherfucker

2007-04-07T15:55:00.000-05:00

I’m not a brief guy. I take my time developing character, situation. I like to give a story resonance and, what’ll we call it? Aroma, texture, sound. You know?

A joke among my friends is that my titles are longer than some people’s stories: “God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him.” “’What Do You Know of the Land of Death?’ Clown Said One Night to the Haunted Boy.” “She Was Washing Her Frock When Winston Churchill Came Galloping Out of the Mist.”

That last one got cut down to “Children, Invisible, Watching from the Great Darkness,” but you get the idea.

Not surprisingly, I’m not much for “flash fiction” – short tales, typically begun developed and ended in 500-700 words.

I never intended to enter the flash fiction competition at this year’s World Horror Convention in Toronto. I went to hear some of my friends read. While slicking my hair and tucking my shirt in the room just before the event, though, I remembered a little thing I’d written a year or so ago, one of those things that nudges you when you’re doing something else and you have to put it down. I popped open the computer, dug through the electrons and there it was… 1,246 words titled, “Then, Just Dreaming…” I read it. More than five minutes – the contest limits readers to five minutes and not a heartbeat longer.

I trimmed it…read it again. Still over. Trimmed some more – it wasn’t hard – even at 1,200 words, the story had some flab. I printed it. Went down to the lobby. Read it. Crossed out a few more words then let it go. You can’t do flash fiction, Larry! Hell no. Peter Crowther was judging! So was Ed Bryant. Peter, Ed and Nancy Kilpatrick! Christ no.

I stuck the four pages in my pocket and went in to hear my friends read.

Other chums saw me there.

Chums chuckled. “Santoro at a flash fiction contest!” Big laugh. “No, no,” I say. “I’m just here to watch.”

“Mutually exclusive concepts: Santoro and short fiction! Ha!”

So, I sign up.

I sit. My name is called. I get up. The assembled audients call out the traditional starting signal:

“On your mark! Get set!! READ LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER!!!”
I read like a motherfucker. It is not that I motormouth the tale, I just keep it brisk. I begin quickly because I know near the end there’s a moment when I need a some dead air to give the following some weight. So I establish a pace quick enought to make even a short pause seem like a deathwatch. Later beats lend themselves to breathless rushing. There I do read like a motherfucker.

I make one verbal stumble somewhere along the way, but I keep going.

I speak the tale’s final word (for the record, that word is "Goddamn...!") just as the timekeeper puts his hand on my shoulder. I am in, out and under five by less than a second.

The judges retire to confer. We drink and giggle.

They return.

I do not take third place– the spot I half-way hoped for because there had been some really good writer/readers! I do not take second. I’m done.

I do take first place.

The world is turvy, topsy-wise. We’ve fallen into another version of the Big All.

The prize? Braggin rights, basically. But I am pleased and honored so here I am: Bragging.

I read like a motherfucker.

A Cover Adjustment to ISBN - 0-9779049-1-1

2007-03-06T21:40:00.000-06:00

Easier to read. Yes?

A Preliminary Look at ISBN - 0-9779049-1-1

2007-03-03T22:34:00.000-06:00

Needless to say, I'm a happy dude. Alan Clark's incredible illustration sets this off beautifully. I love how the typeface lets the light in at the top...

We're still working on layout and having endless fun with Italics, CAPS, font -- my font guru, Kate Campion, where are you now!!!

To think, just a day ago, this is what it all looked like...

On a separate note: "Just North..." has had a mini-review from Nebula Award winning author Richard Chwedyk who wrote this about it...

"There is only one greater pleasure to hearing Lawrence Santoro read his tales of Bluffton aloud, and that is having them collected together here in this volume, where you have the opportunity to read, re-read and savor every little description. The added revelation of this book, for those who have read or heard parts of the narrative separately, is how seamlessly and inevitably it all comes together. Santoro has assembled a remarkable cast of characters, but none so vivid, so funny, so dangerous and variable as Bluffton and surroundings itself. Bluffton is one of those tiny jewels -- locked away in the bottom drawer of a desk of someone long ago passed and forgotten -- that reflects the world with excruciating clarity in every facet but casts its light in unfamiliar and unsettling ways. It is at once diabolical and redemptive, as all great works of dark tale-telling should be. And now, with gratitude to Larry, this jewel is ours."

"May we use it wisely."

Five-time Bram Stoker nominee, Wayne Allen Sallee said...

"Have you ever driven down a highway at night and off in the distance you can see a tiny red light, you realize it is a soda machine at some gas station in some town you'll never see. Well, Lawrence Santoro's voice resonates throughout the streets of that town, giving it form and history and most of all, giving it to us in his own words, telling us about another town while we were driving to nowhere."

I love the image Wayne conjurs in that. Strangely, it's part of the fetchings of the Bluffton stories. When I used to drive north from Chicago into the driftless to visit an old friend, the last 50 miles were on two-lane blacktops that wound among the mountainettes and bluffs and, from time to time, eased through small dark towns. Late nights, the automata of missing humans -- winking stop lights, wells pumping through the night, and, yes, the patient glow of the soda machines -- in the untenanted places of these buttoned up worlds reminded me of how lonely and how, somehow, American it was to be driving a hole through the middle of the night. American Zen. Something of that, I think, nudged me toward Bluffton.

We're in final proofing. Should be done in about 24 hours -- give or take a lifetime and a few billion synaptic coffee-jangled misfires. This is harder than writing the damn thing but we're working our asses off to get "Just North..." ready for the World Horror Convention in Toronto at the end of this month. It'll be a hump but Roger Trexler -- the publisher -- is certain we can do it!

If we can't I've got a rusty razor in the cupboard, dulled and waiting!

A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY - The Flip-Side

2007-01-27T12:34:00.000-06:00

Behold. The back cover to Mike Heffernan's anthology A DARK AND DEADLY VALLY, due out from Silverthought Press in February of this year.

I just got the galleys to it -- and to the Bluffton book, JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE -- and am up to my limpid's in commas and re-spellings.

I would like to post Alex McVey's illustration for my story, "At Angels Sixteen" but I haven't a clue how to do it. The world of electrons is getting harder and harder for Old-Century types like me to fiddle!

"At Angels Sixteen" centers on the tail gunner of a B-17 Flying Fortress who faces some elemental problems staying alive over Schweinfurt during the air war in Europe. I can't show Alex's very shiny art, but this......this is the critter, herself.

I've always been a little in love with the -17s; actually saved nickles and dimes and bought a big picture book about them when I was 7 or 8; actually been IN the tail of one; actually aloft in her -- a dry run, a just for fun run, nobody shooting. No payload. I was maybe five. The year was maybe 1947 or '48 and my dad and I were at an air show at Spaatz Field in Reading, Pennsylvania. A lot of 17s were left back then. I think they were still in the arsenal at the time but my old man wangled us a spin. Maybe it was my uncle Bohny -- that's pronounced "Boney" -- who was a captain in the Corps and a pretty scary guy.

It's all vague but the ride! The ride was scary and wonderful! Chattery, windy, like riding a boxcar with loose slats on a curvy stretch of bad rail. Of course I loved it!

I've never spoken to a single -17 crew guy from the war who hasn't choked a little, remembering. Remembering what? The ride, the guys, the time. Of course they were soldiers then and young...we all choke up over youth.

As of January, 2007, there are only 14 of the old Forts still flying...

Hell, why am I nostalgic over an old warbird? My youth? I was near enough to smell it but was never in the shit. War is good for a horror tale or two but that's is as close as I ever wanted to be; as close as anyone ever should be.

Another Book, Upcoming Readings and Some Added News

2007-01-07T09:18:00.001-06:00

This funny old place carries a lot of personal and public history. I'll tell you about it...

But that's the new book...

Here's a quick note to let you know that I've got two readings in Chicago this month in advance of the publication of "Just North of Nowhere," and my story in A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY.

The first is on Thursday, January 18th at 7:30pm at Cafe Ennui, 6981 North Sheridan Road.

The second is on Monday, January 29th also at 7:30 at The Red Lion Pub, 2446 North Lincoln Avenue. This is the Twilight Tales venue. Later this year, Twilight Tales will publish a revamped and expanded version of their anthology, TALES FROM THE RED LION. I'm pleased to report that TALES... will include a somewhat updated version of my story, "Cordwell's Book."

Stop by have a listen. You can also stop by Twilight Tales online and buggle about and find some really nifty stuff! In addition to stories, information, good people with whom to chat, they've also got podcasts...the which include my story, "Little Girl Down the Way." It all begins at: www.twilighttales.com

Some new business...

The photos. They're settings. Locations for a new book I've been fussing with most of my adult life. I'm finally sitting down to write it -- not that I haven't done so before. Oh, I have...plenty of times. I've got hundreds of pages about these places. Problem is, they were unfocused, they were little time trips. It's taken a while, but I think I have a handle on the places and the people and am beginning to figure out what they're trying to say.

This greens-topped birthcanal back alley is the start of a lot of stories.

It's where we found ourselves and figured out what we could do, what we couldn't do...and what scared the hell out of us.

Quite a few of them find their way here...

The reading at Ennui on January 18, will be from this new book. It doesn't yet have a title but it's working-tag is "The Dogboys and WAS..." By the way, WAS is prounounced 'Whaz' -- as in 'whazoo' -- and, yes, we get that information the first time we encouter WAS!

I hope it tickles your urges! Hope you stop by Ennui and The Lion.

A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY

2006-11-02T10:37:00.001-06:00

January, 2007, is shaping up to be a big month for me.

My Bluffton collection, "Just North of Nowhere," is due out from Annihilation Press about then. So, too, I'm now told is my longish short story (do I do anything but?) "At Angels Sixteen" in the Mike Heffernan-edited A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY. (Brownie points for anyone who can identify the source of that title without looking it up! )

You've probably sussed the fact that ADDV is a collection of stories set in and around World War II. My contribution, "At Angels Sixteen," is a story I wrote about 8 years ago (and, typically, never tried to sell). The central character is the tail gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress who encounters more than flak and the Luftwaffe in the skies over Germany!

Mike's put together an incredible line-up of talent for this book and I'm honored to be part of it. Take a look:

"After Dunkirk" by T.M Wright
"The Coventry Boy" by Graham Joyce
"The Honor Guard" by Paul Finch
"In the Dark and the Deep" by Steve Vernon
"Simple Equations" by Jeremy Robert Johnson
"The Night is an Ally" by Scott Nicholson
"Come Unto Me" by Elizabeth Massie
"And the Worm Shall Feed" by Harry Shannon
"At Angels Sixteen" by my own self, Lawrence Santoro
"The Black Wave" by Brian Keene
"And They Will Come in the Hour of Our Greatest Need" by Brian Hodge
"The Devil's Platoon" by John Everson
"Sturm und Drang" by Bev Vincent
"Hiroshima Falling" by Weston Ochse
"Doorway to the Sky" by Cody Goodfellow
"A Judgment Call for Judgment Day" by Scott Edelman
"Blossoms in the Wind" by Rick Hautala
"The Gypsy Camp" by Mort Castle
"Warbirds" by David J. Schow
"But Somewhere I Shall Wake" by Gary A. Braunbeck

Stop by this site: http://www.silverthought.com/preddv.html or click on the title above the post and check it out...
I'm told that books like this get snapped up by collectors like/THAT! So order early!

JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE

2006-10-28T09:12:00.000-05:00

I put this picture up earlier, months ago in fact, back when Alan Clark finished it. This is the cover illustration for my book, JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE.

Needless to say, I love the painting. It's an image from the chapter called "The Ninth Goddamned Kid."

Still not sure of the publication date but we're shooting for early 2007.

For those of you who have read or heard any of the "Bluffton" stories, this is a collection that doesn't quite exhaust the supply -- yes, there are a few more in the trunk -- but these are the ones that currently fit into a comfortable sequence, one with the other! It's damn-near a novel for cripes' sake!

If any of you are only familiar with my "vile tales" such as :"Little Girl Down the Way," or "Catching" (from the SEX CRIMES anthology -- and even I shudder at that one -- the story and the book!) then the Bluffton stories may surprise you.

This WILL Make Sense

2006-10-18T18:30:00.000-05:00

Soon, sometime soon, I'll explain.

Okay. I'll explain a little of it now: I turned in the ms. for "Just North of Nowhere" last night. Well, okay: ms. is a misnomer. I turned in the file, sent the disc. Except for individual chapters and tales that I've printed out for readings, the book hasn't seen paper YET! But the publisher has the words, the virtual pages! All 499 of them.

This doesn't mean I'm finished. Oh no! Lots left to do, and after that, more! Lots more to sell the thing. Hopefully we'll have the book out, well, soon! In time for NEXT Christmas!!

The picture: it's one of the bluffs of the REAL Bluffton -- the name of which I will not say. Not here. Not yet.

The other picture is another bluff. Bluffton's surrounded by them. See? I wasn't kidding. The Driftless is real!

Okay. More later. I'm exhausted. Back in a bit.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

2006-10-02T08:33:00.000-05:00

Okay. Summer's over. The Cubs won their last game and the team's been disbanded for the season. See you next summer all you suburban yutzes that have pissed in my alley and puked on my stoop and stood around in an alcoholic daze wondering how we city-dwellers could live in such dirty surroundings.

Anyway. IT is nearly finished. That's right: the book's almost done and I'll soon be back to solo blogging. In the meantime...here's a pitiful story out of Texas from the Dallas Morning News.

I WAS going to post a report on the Religious Nut convention, the "Values Voter Summit" that took place in Washington DC on September 22-23, but I just couldn't. Really...I was so furious, so shakingly terrified for the future of the country, that I couldn't bring myself to post it.

Frisco teacher on leave after museum trip
Art instructor who led museum trip will not have contract renewed

07:23 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 26, 2006

By KAREN AYRES / The Dallas Morning News

FRISCO – An elementary school art teacher who has been publicly at odds with the Frisco school district over a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art is no longer in front of a classroom.

The school district placed Sydney McGee on leave with pay Friday afternoon. After a special school board meeting Monday night about Ms. McGee, Superintendent Rick Reedy said he would recommend that her contract not be renewed when it expires at the end of the school year.

In the meantime, Ms. McGee will be paid her full salary while remaining on leave from Fisher Elementary School.

Ms. McGee's attorney, Rogge Dunn, said the decision was a "crazy use of taxpayers' money."

"She wants to be in there with her kids," Mr. Dunn said.

A Frisco ISD spokeswoman said the district had no further comments on the case.

Ms. McGee, a 28-year veteran teacher, contends she was retaliated against after a parent complained that a student saw a nude statue during a field trip to the museum in April.

District officials have repeatedly pointed to other performance issues and said the trip didn't spark the reprimands.

Ms. McGee became the subject of frequent media reports over the last month after the board rejected her August request to transfer to another Frisco school.

District officials said they didn't want to give Ms. McGee an escape hatch to move elsewhere without addressing other issues, including lesson-plan preparation.

But Ms. McGee said she received a negative review and several directives from Fisher principal Nancy Lawson only after a parent reportedly complained about the trip.

The school board stopped short of terminating Ms. McGee's contract Monday night. But after a closed-door session, Dr. Reedy said he would recommend that her contract not be renewed.

"If they had good reason to fire her, they would have, but they don't," Mr. Dunn said. "It's mind-boggling."

Buddy Minett, school board president, declined to talk about the case.

"This is something where it's really better if we don't comment," he said.

Mr. Dunn said he and Ms. McGee plan to review their legal options.

E-mail kayres@dallasnews.com

SIGH

2006-09-15T06:39:00.000-05:00

Still hard a-work on "Just North of Nowhere" but I thought I'd post this little piece of wishful thinking from -- of all places -- Newsweek magazine!

An Alternate 9/11 History
By staying 'humble,' as he promised in 2000, Bush preserved much of the post-9/11 good will abroad.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 18, 2006 issue - Five years after 9/11, the world is surprisingly peaceful. President Bush's pragmatic and bipartisan leadership has kept the United States not just strong but unexpectedly popular across the globe. The president himself is poised to enjoy big GOP wins in the midterm elections, a validation of his subtle understanding of the challenges facing the country. A new survey of historians puts him in the first tier of American presidents.

As Bush warned, catching terrorists wasn't easy, but he kept at it. At the battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground cabled Washington that Osama bin Laden was cornered, but they desperately needed troop support. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately dispatched fresh forces, and the evildoer was killed. While bin Laden was seen as a martyr in a few isolated areas, the bulk of the Arab world had been in sympathy with the United States after 9/11 and shed no tears. After their capture, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists were transported to the United States, where they were tried and quickly executed.

Today, Al Qaeda remains a threat but its opportunities for recruitment have been scarce, and the involvement of the entire international community has helped dramatically reduce terrorist attacks worldwide. Because Bush believes diplomacy requires talking to adversaries as well as friends, even Syria and Iraq were forced to help. By staying "humble," as he promised in 2000, he preserved much of the post-9/11 good feeling abroad, which paid dividends when it came time to pull together a coalition to handle North Korea and Iran.

At home, some aides suggested that Bush simply tell the nation to "go shopping." But the president knew he had a precious opportunity to ask Americans for real sacrifice. He took John McCain's suggestion and pushed through Congress an ambitious national-service program that bolstered communities and helped train citizens as first responders.

Soon Bush put the country on a Manhattan Project crash course to get off oil. He bluntly told Detroit that it was embarrassing that Chinese automakers had better fuel efficiency, he classified SUVs as cars, and he imposed a stiff gas tax with a rebate for the working poor. To pay for it, he abandoned his tax cuts for the wealthy, reminding the country that no president in history had ever cut taxes in the middle of a war. This president would be damned if he was going to put more oil money into the pockets of Middle Eastern hatemongers who had killed nearly 3,000 of our people. To dramatize the point, he drove to his 2002 State of the Union address in a hybrid car. Sales soared.

When Karl Rove suggested that the war on terror would make a perfect wedge issue against Democrats in the 2002 midterms, Bush brought him up short. Didn't Rove understand that bipartisanship is good politics? Lincoln and FDR had both gone bipartisan during wartime, he reminded his aide. So when evidence of torture at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay surfaced and Rumsfeld was forced to resign, former Democratic senator Sam Nunn got the job. With post-9/11 unity still at least partially intact in 2004, Bush was re-elected in a landslide.

Taking a cue from Lincoln's impatience with his generals, Bush was merciless about poor performance on homeland security. When the head of the FBI couldn't fix the bureau's computers in a year's time to "connect the dots," he was out. And Bush had no patience for excuse-making about leaky port security, unsecured chemical plants and first responders whose radios didn't communicate. If someone had told him that five years after 9/11 these problems would still be unsolved, Bush would have laughed him out of the office.

In 2003, Vice President Cheney advised the president to take out Iraq's Saddam Hussein militarily. But Bush was beginning to understand that his veep, while sounding full of gravitas, was in fact reckless. When it became clear that Saddam posed no imminent threat, Bush resolved to neuter him, Kaddafi style. When the president found, after a little asking around, that the 10-year cost of invading Iraq would be a crushing $1.2 trillion, he opted out of this war of choice.

Five years after that awful September day, even Bush's fiercest critics have learned an important lesson: leadership counts. Imagine if we'd done the opposite of these things. This country—and the world—would be in a heap of trouble.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14753927/site/newsweek/

LITTLE GIRL

2006-08-09T09:21:00.000-05:00

Of course I Google myself! And NO that doesn't mean THAT! Having done so recently -- just for curiosity, you understand -- I noted a site that linked to the podcast of "Little Girl Down the Way."

I'm trying to post it here. I have no idea if this will work -- if my previous history with this kind of stuff is any indication of the future, it won't -- but there we are. Go here: http://www.odeo.com/audio/631294/view

IF you can get there...have a listen and let me know what you think.

Control Alt Delete Democracy

2006-08-04T08:30:00.000-05:00

Still working on JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE so I'm still having my blog guest-written. This is from the Long Island Press:

Control Alt Delete Democracy
Lazlow 08/03/2006 11:46 am

I am terribly unimpressed with the future. I don’t have a jet pack or a space car. I have to wait in line and be felt up for minimum wage before sitting on the tarmac for hours and then riding in an airborne cattle car with sweaty fat people and $5- snack boxes. Teleportation was supposed to be here. My car was supposed to fit in my suitcase. Robot maids stink. I’ve been through several robot maids, Roombas and Aibos alike. The future to me seems a lot like the past, except I can’t smoke at concerts, all the girls you think are real are fake, and there’s still nothing on TV.

I can, if I want, go online and vote against Bill Gates as CEO of Microsoft. If you own shares of any company, a proxy vote notification arrives via e-mail, and you log in, vote, and you’re done. It’s democracy that takes minutes. Why then is e-voting in this country the equivalent of a 50-car pileup with a gas tanker?

After the election mess of 2000, where tens of thousands of people in Florida were (oops) accidentally dropped off the voting rolls, 2004 saw a colossal failure of e-voting machines. And this next election will be no different.

American taxpayers have paid for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of computerized voting machines that are screaming for fraud and vote manipulation.
Diebold, the manufacturer of most of the e-voting machines in the country, even had a CEO in 2004 who promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. Ohio is still having issues.
According to CNN, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, an election held on May 2 was an absolute failure, as Diebold e-voting machines dropped or displaced several hundred registered voters, froze up, or crashed.

Now some hacker activists have exposed a horrifying flaw with Diebold machines. After examining one of the most popular (and paperless) touch-screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, Open Voting Foundation President Alan Dechert says the group found that by flipping a single switch inside, an election can be altered. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS — and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.”

Diebold has fought efforts for mandatory paper trails. I mean, it’s the future! Why double check? Diebold has also fought efforts to publish their code so democracy can be open source, published for the record and analyzed for flaws. Computer professor Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins University studied the code and told CBS, “We found all kinds of problems in the code,” he said. “A computer scientist can look at a program and immediately tell you if it was written by professional programmers who know how to do software engineering or if it was just put together by a bunch of hacks. And, upon looking at the source code for Diebold, it was pretty clear that this was a real amateur job.”

Counting the votes is a core component of democracy. If e-voting is the future of elections, I’m not impressed.

--

Lazlow hosts the nationally syndicated radio program "Technofile" and wrote and produced audio for "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."
Contact him at Lazlow@lazlow.com.

Custodians of Chaos

2006-07-19T21:01:00.000-05:00

Still to the eyeballs in bits and pieces of "Bluffton" trying to get JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE ready for publication this November, I'm letting others do my talking for me.

Look, I never intended this space to be a political platform but too much of the country I was born into is slipping away right now, being gobbled up by the 'PPs' today's 'guest' writer speaks of.

This is an extract from Kurt Vonnegut's forthcoming memoirs. The image is from IN THESE TIMES:

06/17/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer Show

But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana.

Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.

"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution.

But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".

George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!

Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.

PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.

So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.

They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme
Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I
loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on.

I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published in early 2004, that humiliating, shameful, blood-soaked year.

In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African-Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appallingly powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed.

In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as Nazis once were.

And with good reason.

In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanised millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanised our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O'Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the first world war. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the first world war so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the second world war and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?

© 2005 Kurt Vonnegut Extracted from A Man Without a Country: : A Memoir of
Life in George W Bush's America.

More of the Toxic Ms...

2006-07-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

I knew there was a reason I was secretly drawn to "The Man Show" -- years ago, of course! It wasn't the guy who could down a gallon of beer in about 3 seconds flat and it wasn't the boobs. It really wasn't! I knew that one day Adam Carolla would make me proud to be a man! Recently -- July 7, I believe it was -- he was expecting Ann Coulter to be a phone-in guest on his radio talk show. Ms. Toxic Shock was late and...well, listen in...here is a transcript:

ADAM CAROLLA: Ann Coulter, who was suppose to be on the show about an hour and a half ago, is now on the phone, as well. Ann?

ANN COULTER: Hello.

CAROLLA: Hi Ann. You’re late, babydoll.

COULTER: Uh, somebody gave me the wrong number.

CAROLLA: Mmm… how did you get the right number? Just dialed randomly — eventually got to our show? (Laughter in background)

COULTER: Um, no. My publicist e-mailed it to me, I guess, after checking with you.

CAROLLA: Ahh, I see.

COULTER: But I am really tight on time right now because I already had a —

CAROLLA: Alright, well, get lost. [Click]

Brings a tear to my eye. Stand up, fellow Men!

Ann Coulter is a Clown...

2006-07-13T12:27:00.000-05:00

Alas, too many people take her seriously. I forthwith quote from Editor & Publisher on the subject of the 'toxic' Ms. Coulter.

'NY Post' Cites Evidence That Ann Coulter Plagiarized Parts of Book, Columns

By E&P Staff

Published: July 02, 2006 7:35 PM ET

NEW YORK Well, Ann Coulter may be "liberal" in one respect, anyway. The New York Post reported Sunday that author/columnist Coulter "cribbed liberally in her latest book" and also in several of her syndicated columns, according to a plagiarism expert.

John Barrie, creator of the iThenticate plagiarism-probing system, claimed he found at least three examples of what he called "textbook plagiarism" in the new Coulter book "Godless" after he ran its text through the program.

He also discovered verbatim copying in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers by Universal.

The headline in classic Post fashion: COPYCATTY COULTER PILFERS PROSE: PRO

Bloggers had been citing examples of alleged Coulter cribbing for months.

After detailing some of the alleged plagiarism in the book, the Post article related that Barrie also ran Coulter's columns from the past year through iThenticate "and found similar patterns of cribbing.

"Her Aug. 3, 2005, column, 'Read My Lips: No New Liberals,' about U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, includes six passages, ranging from 10 to 48 words each, that appeared 15 years earlier in the same order in an L.A. Times article, headlined 'Liberals Leery as New Clues Surface on Souter's Views.' But nowhere in that column does she mention the L.A. Times or the story's writer, David G. Savage.

"Her June 29, 2005, column, 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Religion,' incorporates 10 facts on National Endowment for the Arts-funded work that originally appeared in the same order in a 1991 Heritage Foundation report, 'The National Endowment for the Arts: Misusing Taxpayers' Money.' But again, the Heritage Foundation isn't credited."

Barrie said, "Just as Coulter plays free and loose with her citations in 'Godless,' she obviously does the same in her columns."

Meanwhile, many of the 344 citations Coulter includes in "Godless" "are very misleading," said Barrie, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he specialized in pattern recognition.

"They're used purely to try and give the book a higher level of credibility - as if it's an academic work. But her sloppiness in failing to properly attribute many other passages strips it of nearly all its academic merits," he told The Post.

Coulter did not respond to requests for comment.

Word Eater

2006-05-31T06:29:00.000-05:00

I'm a word-omnivore. I'll read about anything I can put eyes to-- cereal boxes, toilet paper wrappers, the backs of old CTA transfers left in a pocket years earlier. I have a sneaking suspicion that I sometimes write a specifice something just to have an excuse to pore over books quaint and curious. Fact is, over the last few decades, research reading has become an obsession with me.

I write from the inside out...maybe I just postpone having to write for as long as possible or maybe I'm just a lazy sod who tells himself that reading is work. BUT...every time I write I butt into my own ignorance and find I've got to research something or another just to get my head and gut into the same place and get that place next to my characters.

For example: I recently, I shipped a novella for an upcoming anthology. The setting for the story, "Wind Shadows" is in the British trenches in Belgium during WW I. I knew what I wanted to say about the people in the tale. I knew roughly what the plot would ask them to do and what would happen to them, but the only clue I had to what their world was like from kidhood reads of "All Quiet on the Western Front" and seeing movies like "Paths of Glory."

By the time I finished "Wind Shadows," I had at least an academic understanding not only of how the whole debacle of trench warfare evolved during that conflict, but I came away with a gut appreciation of what a trench smelled like three days after a big push, I knew what sort of shit the troops got into when they rotated to the rear, I had some sense of the lives and routines of these men.

I'd have to go look at my "Wind Shadows" shelf, but I'd estimate that I read all or significant parts of about a dozen books in getting 15,000 or so words of story onto the screen. I cut a lot in subsequent and final passes, but the research reading had informed the shape and feel of the story. Hell, it's still there in subtext.

Research reading has become a staple of my morning and evening commutes. Even when I'm not working on a story, I find I'm drawn to books that most people have passed by. I love the dump-bins at bookstores, the last chance for some poor old things, nobody wants... Sometimes, passing by, something just pops. During the build for "Wind Shadows" for instance, a long skinny thing called "Harry's War: Experiences in the Suicide Club in World War One" caught my attention in a bin at Powell's in Hyde Park, Chicago. Filled with crude, hand colored sketches and trench-time jottings by a guy named Harry Stinton...just a bloke who was stuck out there figuring each day would probably be his last... "Harry's War," was a heady read -- I went through it twice for "Wind Shadows" and have since spent time with the pictures. There's more to this...but I have to run. Off to work, reading "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail."

Hazel's Dunes Shack

2006-05-26T11:27:00.001-05:00

This is the interior of Hazel's shack -- I found it on another person's site and have no idea how to credit him/her. This is not where Hazel lived when we knew her, but it is typical of a P'town dunes shack... The places give comfort, in that way that a supra-simplified life snuggles and strokes artists and writers in need of isolation. When I was 30, I would loved one. I might have when I was 40. Now...I need a nearby bathroom and a place to plug the computer!

The Salon-Keeper of P'Town, Mass.

2006-05-26T10:20:00.000-05:00

Hazel Hawthorne Werner...was the literary hostess, doyenne salon-keeper of Provincetown, Massachusetts, during the town's gathering years as America’s beaux-arts colony extra ordinaire.

During the 20s, 30s, 40s Hazel also kept a salon in Greenwich Village.

Edmund Wilson, E.E. Cummings, (before he lost his upper case), Eugene O'Neill -- the literary mob we kids of the 40s were raised on -- all hung out with her and her husband, Morrie Werner (editor, writer, drunk and P.T. Barnum biographer), in the Village then followed them up to P'Town on the Cape to hang with them on the dunesey sand. Hazel rented O'Neill the shack on the dunes in which he lived when he was writing his early plays. She rented, then gave it to him, kept him up and working, didn't let him slip into the booze and end-of-life drama he was writing himself into at the time. Hell, the "Sea Plays" were all written in Hazel and Morrie's shack on the beach and were first performed in a little potting shed down off Commonwealth Street (I think it was off Commonwealth -- it 's been a while since I've been there) before the plays went to New York and that city's "Provincetown Playhouse."

I knew Hazel when I lived in P'Town, 1970-71. She was lean, straight, and palsied, her voice, thin, reedy, and cut-glass proper. But despite seeming infirmity, Hazel, using no authority but strength of character, kept the Northeastern American literary establishment proper...not on-track artistically (she didn't seem to care about that), but she kept it, at least, minding its table manners through the 70s. She did, indeed. I watched.

I was married to a woman named Ernestine Worrall at the time. She and I attended a political meeting on behalf of George McGovern and a local candidate for the House of Representatives, Gerry Studds, in a church basement in P'Town.

Before coming up to P’town to work on a few projects, I had spoken passionately back home in Philadelphia on behalf of McGovern and of my ongoing dedication to that race. And at the meeting in Massachusetts, I committed my wife, talents and sacred hours to working not only for the McGovern presidency but for Mr. Studds election. It was the right thing to do...

A chum of ours, the just-down-from-Harvard editor of the Provincetown weekly paper (whenever you find yourself suddenly in a small town -- get to know the local editor!), rose, too, in personal defense of the Democratic Party and of George McGovern; he spoke of Richard Nixon’s perfidy and the ineffectiveness of the incumbent House Member from the Cape. We all filled with the rightness of our cause, the new rising of the young. Yada, yada.

Though it all, Norman Mailer bullied, railed, raged, threatened and called down the wrath of celebrity upon any who disagreed...

Without standing, with barely a look, a whip-thin, horsey, elegant old woman spoke. Pale, in a flowered dress, white socks rolled over sneakers, her voice ululating like a 78 Victrola on a bad road, her head quivering when she spoke. She froze Norman, all of us...

"Oh Norman, do sit down, for heaven's sake! You're behaving like a very bad boy!"

He did. Such was her authority.

That cut through the crap, the blowhardery. In 3 minutes, she'd focused the chatter and formed the kernel of a group to support Studds’ candidacy and, almost incidentally, to help McGovern.

If Senator McGovern can’t take Massachusetts without our help, she thought aloud, we can forget him, period.

Simple. That was that.

Hazel was the great-great-something-granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The which did not impress her, in particular (she wasn't easily impressed). Her fetchin’s did, however, impart to her an impeccable authority as a New Englander. At least to other New Englanders. That sort of thing is important there. If you arrived at 15 and lived to be 85, you were still referred to as "the new fellah," to the natives.

Maybe that's true everywhere...

Hazel and Morrie had split up years before. I have no idea why. Why do those things happen anywhere?

She lived in the converted garage near where their house once stood. Fire, I believe, had removed the place. That was out on Shankpainter Road. My memory wants it to have been there...such a grand name for a forested trail along the dunes.

(Edit: While my memory might have wanted her place to be on Shankpainter Road, it was actually on Howland Street. Ah well...)

Morrie kept their apartment in New York.

She stayed in P'Town until each year became too cold to have her, until the winds threatened to stop her in her tracks or rush her off her feet. Then she'd go spend a few months to the South, in brick, with Morrie on the Upper East Side.

In Spring, she'd be back on the dunes.

For whatever reason, Hazel adopted Ernie, me; took us under her wing for the year we lived there.

I had come, commissioned by the Annenberg Center in Philly, to write a play -- a musical comedy about the Black Death.

Really!

For this endeavor I was reasonably well-accepted into the Confraternity of P'Town artists. Most of the people Ernie and I hung with were Pulitzer winners, National Book awardees, such and the like. A good part of our social life consisted of going to readings, openings, showings, presentations, lectures, events... Like that.

Hazel was not part of it but seemed to hover, invisibly around it; a mentioned absence, a spoken-of non-presence, a noted vacancy.

When our laureate chums found that, in addition to the serious -- and understandable -- work of writing a funny play about the Bubonic Plague, I was also interested in -- and actually DID write -- science fiction and fantasy, there was much side-glancing, wide-eyeing, and staring... Uncomprehending squints, stares and slow turns of heads.

Norman and Beverly Mailer, whose children we used to babysit from time to time, seemed to get it, seemed to be okay with it.

Others, simply passed us by.

Hazel, it seems, came to our rescue. By inviting us to dinner, by attending a few events with us, with her as our "guest", she turned the questioning stares of the entire arts community.

I don't doubt that it was a conscious choice on her part, this small intervention. She never did like pomposity, disdained arrogance.

Maybe she liked that I didn't care if this group accepted me. I actually didn't. Not too much, anyway.

Perhaps she liked Ernie's bread or the fact that we used to sit and chat with her at her place Saturday mornings, coffee and oatmeal, steamy windows and foggy skies and rolling ocean beyond her trees and dunes. Maybe she liked our talk of city streets, of Philadelphia, of chums and villains. Maybe she liked that we had time to talk about things other than bookish things.

Maybe she liked science fiction and fantasy.

Whatever it was, I liked her and so did Ernie. I got over her being the great great-grand-something-daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hazel seemed, at once, fragile and razor strong. As I mentioned, she was palsied. Her hands ran a constant round-and-round circle of tremors and quivers. Her head bobbed, her voice quavered. To watch her eat, pour a cup, water a plant, was painful. Once, early, I made the beginning of a move to help her pour from her coffee pot.

She looked.

That was enough. I relaxed, so did she.

Despite multi-planar shakes Hazel didn't spill a drop; each move of each hand somehow found its correspondent move on the other.

Not

a

drop

Not important, her acceptance of me, her by-her-acts defense of me, not important at all in the long run of anything, but it was typical of her. She placed her person and the tradition which she seemed, unconsciously, to represent, at the service of a person whom, for whatever reasons, she liked.

After her "acceptance," Stanley Kunitz and his lady-woman embraced us; Alan Duggan, almost always drunk but still writing god-wonderful poetry, seemed to forget that in addition to doing a comic play about the Black Death, I also wrote pulpy things. He began publicly sharing the16oz cans of Blatz he always carried in his parka pockets with me up on Commonwealth by the coffee shop. Jack and Wally Tworkov had us in and that was that...

That was then, the McGovern year in Provincetown. By accident, in April, 2000, I found that Hazel, doubtless edging toward a hundred, was still alive. Standing possibly, probably, with one foot in the shadow of the 19th century, another in the 21st. She was then the oldest resident of Cape Cod.

How amazing.

One of the Sights at WHC 2006

2006-05-19T14:25:00.000-05:00

The Boy George of Genre

This isn't what I meant when I mentioned the hyper-testosteroned lads of WHC, below, but it is another reason to think about World Horror in the way that one might consider bungie-jumping without a cord. This fellow's name is Wilum H. Pugmire the working partner of Jessica Amanda Salmonson. He writes pretty decent Lovecraftian stories. Has the Lovecraft patois down pat.

World Horror Convention - 2006

2006-05-19T14:10:00.000-05:00

Thank you for wondering! I’m back.

I’ve mentioned somewhere in here that I sometimes write horror and not just contemporary fantasy. When I become pissed at something or someone, when an event or person really grabs and twists my Forevers, when the world just starts crowding me, I sometimes crank out one of my “vile tales” – literally as fast as it takes to type them.

“Little Girl Down the Way” is one -- you can hear that podcast on the Twilight Tales website (http://www.twilighttales.com/podcast/). “Catching” is another (available in the anthology, SEX CRIMES, at disreputable booksellers, everywhere)...stories that arose, fully vented, out of pique, disgust, anger and all those more noble urges we human critters experience from time to time. Some people get drunk or beat their cats. I write. I’m too old to drink without severe next-day agony and my cat’s too old to take a thrumping. Besides, I like him.

So, here I am: just returned from the 2006 World Horror Convention in San Francisco. Typically, World Horror (WHC) is not my favorite genre con – that would be NECon (more on that anon), held yearly in Rhode Island. Fact is, I generally feel about an upcoming WHC the same way I do, say, about a root canal: necessary but a lousy way to spend a few days.

It’s required because ‘business’ gets done.

It’s lousy because the field is filled with over-testosteroned macho-posturing swaggerers who all seem to come, cookie-cuttered, one like another, all from the same t-shirt store, all from the same barber college... All of whom seem to have confused the ability to describe gore-fests and ass-kicking with horror writing. Basically a squall of post-frat, pre-angst middle aged boys sniffing for each other like those little black and white plastic dogs with magnets in their noses.

And that’s just the women!

Okay? Not really.

Well...almost.

But this one -- WHC 2006 -- this one left me hopeful. Maybe I mingled more than usual (holy hell, maybe I really AM a self-important asshole?) and actually talked to people outside of the panels I was on or hung out with some after my reading or had grub with strangers, but I looked into some eyes and actually listened to some voices.

I found quite a few remarkably literate people, a whole coterie of writers who were saying something within their work, who seemed concerned with craft and style.

There always were a few, of course, people I tended to hang with: P.D. Cacek, Wayne Allen Sallee, David Thomas Lord, Gene Wolfe (of course! but who, alas, wasn’t in San Francisco), Peter Straub (who, thankfully, was) and others. Good writers, good people all! I also made the acquaintance of one Adam Golaski, an exceptional writer whom I had met briefly at an earlier WHC. I recommend that people search him out and read him. Adam also publishes an annual anthology-magazine, “New Genre” that contains some of the best material – both essay and fiction – from the field that I’ve read in quite a while.

That picture, by the way, is P.D. (Trish) Cacek. She's an old chum and a truly wonderful writer. And NOT one of the boys.

Another guy is William Jones, editor and publisher of the excellent magazine, “Book of Dark Wisdom.” William is another who seems to give a damn about good writing in addition to the usual! His Lovecraftian anthology, “Horrors Beyond,” has some elegant and subtle work in a sub-genre that’s usually rife with faux sensitivity and epic pretention.

There were others. The artist, Alan Clark was there. He's the one who did the cover illustration for my book, "Just North of Nowhere.

I met Joe Medina and Jamie Lawson who are producing horror-themed audio drama...good people!

I’ll be back to this matter in a few days. Right now, I’ve got a book to finish writing and a field to re-think!

Ann Sather's

2006-05-09T06:20:00.000-05:00

Ann Sather's. A lovely Swedish restaurant, that began life in the 1940s as a coffee shop owned by, well, an old Swedish woman. The first location was in a space that eventually became a pet store that specialized in rats, snakes, bugs and spiders.

Sather's moved two doors west just after I moved to Chicago. It's now in classy digs -- a former funeral home with a polished black granite exterior.

And the spider shop? The owners, drug dealers on the side, vanished one weekend after opening their cages and setting free the creepy, crawly and squirmy.

But Sathers...Sathers is where Tycelia and I had our reception. Great Scandanavian grub -- Tycelia's half Swedish -- and world-class sweet rolls!

Old Ghosts

2006-05-06T15:36:00.000-05:00

A few posts ago I noted that my wife's father, William White, was an artist. I also hung up a few photos of his paintings and pretty much left it at that. This one has always intrigued me. I've called it "Old Ghosts" ever since I saw it...I have no idea what Bill called it, but some day I’ll do a story that resonates within this thing. Bill was not a fan of fantasy or horror, yet his private work – the work he did for himself and not for hire – invariably posed dark questions and frequently offered no answers. Of course he was a southerner.

Sad. I barely knew him and what I did know was based on the understandings of a very, very young man who was courting his daughter with no hope of winning her.

...the Wedding

2006-05-05T08:54:00.000-05:00

...the reception at least
Being old enough to be our own parents, this was a do-it-yourself -do from invitations to vows. Well, okay, we didn't make the grub. We invited a few close friends to come have a meal with us at a local restaurant we both like. We loved it and I believe everyone had a grand time. DVDs are available! There will be more anon.

The Romance

2006-05-02T10:01:00.000-05:00

My wife, Tycelia, and I have known each other for more than 40 years. We married just three years ago. When they hear the story, people typically say, “Oh, that’s the most romantic thing!” It is. It’s also sad. Here, let me strip away some of the romance in the telling:

I met Tycelia in September of 1963 in an empty apartment above a shoe store in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. It was my 21st birthday and I was transferring into Kutztown State College from -- well, from several other places which are not important here. I was looking at the walls of the apartment I was about to move into and share with one friend and several strangers. A noise, I turned and there she was. She had come in behind me and was looking for someone. Not me.

Of course I fell in love.

She, apparently, did not.

We went out a few times. Enough, I guess, for both of us to confirm our initial feelings about each other. As college relationships will, ours drifted apart. She started dating one of my roommates who shared that now-filled apartment where we’d met on my birthday.

She graduated.

I went into the Air Force shy of my degree. It was 1965.

By 1969 I was out of the service, recently married, living in Philadelphia and majoring in Theater at Temple University. I was happy.

I’d heard from mutual friends that Tycelia had married and was going to graduate school in Montreal.

She called sometime in the mid-70s, left a message on the machine. She was divorced and back in the States. By then I was working toward my Master’s in theater at Villanova University. I was still married, still more or less happy. I never returned the message. I knew what would happen -- at least from where I was standing.

A few years later, I divorced, moved to Minneapolis and, eventually, came to Chicago.

In 1999 or so an old friend from the Kutztown era interviewed me for an article he was writing for the alumni magazine. The article was about people who had been writers while at school and who continued to write and publish into their adult years.

He mentioned that he’d interviewed Tycelia for the story, that he’d found her through the alumni association. She was still divorced, teaching and living in a small town in Maine.

Would I like her phone number?

Yes. Sure. Okay.

I didn’t call.

Eventually, I did.

We began with letters, email, visits. I was still in love and, now, miraculously, she was too.
Several years later we married. We just celebrated our 3rd anniversary.

We love each other very much. We’re very happy together. While part of me laments the loss of 40 years of being together, I also know that at the time we met I (at least, I) was not ready for a serious relationship. Had we gotten together then, had we married... Well, I know enough now to know that while we seem perfect for each other, that perfection of fit took a good chunk of a lifetime to create. Had the two of us gotten together in 1963, I think Tycelia and I would be a distant memory. As I say, I miss those 40 years, but I am as happy as a human can be that we’re together today.

CinematicUnderground and Us

2006-04-25T06:10:00.000-05:00

Tycelia and I saw "Brick" on Sunday evening. More in a bit. This is Nathan Johnson and the members of Cinematic Underground. Nathan did the score for the film. His cousin, Rian Johnson wrote and directed.

This is one of the most satisfying films I've seen in a long time and I can't recommend it too highly. To say it's a 40s film noir detective classic along the lines of "The Maltese Falcon" set in a modern-day So-Cal high school environment, is both accurate and misleading as hell. It is dead serious and incredibly quirky and fun to be with! Go see it. That's all. Then we'll talk.

Who would have thought that San Clemente would be famous for more than Richard Nixon's home away from home?

Ms. Smith Is a Fan of Mine

2006-03-27T13:20:00.000-06:00

A long, long time ago, when there were wolves in Wales, and I was very, very young, I took a foolish, foolish job. I was in theater at the time and working in Philadelphia. I acted, directed, did any gig I could get. Philly is close to New York. So close -- a hundred-plus miles -- so that those with bright hope and talent eventually went from Market or South Streets north to Broadway or the Village. Those who stayed behind -- or came back -- were either sad failures or the passionate but utterly uninitiated of us. That was the assumption.

...Okay, Andre Gregory was in Philly, but that's another story...

The well-heeled theater-going public of Philly pretty much ignored local efforts and hopped onto the Jersey Turnpike or Amtrak'd their way up to NYC to ease their showgoing Joneses.

I had just graduated from the theater school of Temple University and was considering my next step. Steps. I was married and had commitments to family, city and friends. That's what we told ourselves, Ernestine and I. Excuses, I fear, for not doing things.

Directing was the only thing I really wanted to do. If not that, then, nothing! Problem was, as an unknown in Philly, you were an actor. That was it. When people got to know you, then you got to direct. An ancillary problem was that anybody who had theater gigs to hand out and who didn't know you assumed you were either one or other of the abovementioned -- sad failure or hopeless naïf.

One could always start a company of course. That meant devoting yourself to fundraising, handshaking, butt-kissing, record keeping, the thankless pointlessness of audience building, and its sister shame, press relations/marketing...all that and more.

I had no urge to start a company. No, no. I was a director, not a businessdude.

Understand: I was not kid. I was young, but was not a child; I was just out of school, but had knocked around in professional and were-professional theater for more than a dozen years on three continents. I had some underdeveloped and largely unrecognized talents and some talents that had already been recognized -- just not so anybody in Philly had recognized.

An old chum from Temple HAD started a company. Fritz was his name, Etage was the company. That’s French for "stage" -- that was Fritz. Fritz was producing and directing a play from a new script by another Temple chum, a guy named Ivan. I was asked by both producer and writer to play the lead in what was to be Etage's first effort, "Terminal."

Fritz lived and worked in a vast, dark, ratty warehouse. The building was probably from the tail end of the 19th century and butted, literally, to the docks and lay in the shadow of the Ben Franklin bridge. The show would be rehearsed, built and performed in what amounted to Fritz's living room, said room being some 150 feet long, about 40 wide and 20 or so tall. It was big, dirty, echoic and open. Not bad, actually, as rough theater spaces went in those days. Brick, nitre and hoarfrost; tiny little feet when the lights went out. All the stuff to keep you honest and not let you get too far above yourself.

Ivan, our writer/money guy, had been around. He had just graduated from Temple, and, like I, he was older and more experienced than most of the students in the department. Ivan, in fact, had quite a few chops as a record producer and rock'n'roll promoter. At this time in his life, however, Ivan was seeking “respectability.” He somehow assumed the mantle of "playwright" would bestow that upon him. Silly fellow.

Toward that end, he had written "Terminal" and was using rock and roll bucks to finance the effort.

Trouble was, "Terminal" sucked. Cavernously.

The first read-through showed the script needed an act III gut rehab, a new act II, and an actual act I -- just to get it all rolling. That was it. Not re-writes. Needed were Acts I, II, and III.

It also needed reason to exist. It was the worst sort of absurdist masturbation: seemingly intellectual and passionate while being neither intelligent nor heartfelt – and it didn’t even give a good tingle at the end!

It did provide opportunities for boy and girl actors to scream, cry, fight, cuss, agonize, head-bash, breast beat (on one’s self and others), it allowed for perversion -- real and imagined -- and offered a full range of options for face-making, funny-walking and gutteralizing the English language.

The cast featured mostly kids, kids just starting at Temple or elsewhere, or street kids who'd learned a few garage band rock and roll licks or had done a couple community theater gigs before becoming disillusioned because their parents actually LIKED the shows they’d been in. Most of us had drifted down to the docks under the big suspension bridge to Camden, to do something real, something meaningful, something that reeked of sweat and tasted of gut, something that explored meaninglessness and showed how tough they were, alone, and in the face of it all.

Like I said: Kids. Like we all were, once.

I was assured. The script would be fixed. This was a starting point. This was a framework. Ivan was there. Fritz and Ivan, with the cast, would take it apart and put it all together. We’d be okay. Really.

Never happened.

I rode through five weeks of rehearsal, sometimes enduring the passion, the sweat, the committed anger of the young and needy actors, sometimes not. All the while I worked against my growing and deeply dismal realization that this play had begun life as a piece of shit, it remained a piece of shit, and would for all time and forever be a reminder -- imbedded in my recollection and in the memories of all who would gauge my work from this monument from this time forth -- that I, too, had shit potential.

To my credit I walked out once.

To my discredit, I came back.

About the play: “Terminal” was set in a deserted and devastated air terminal. Was the devastation because of a war, social upheaval, some apocalyptic event?

I didn't know. Fritz didn't know. Ivan didn't know but was certain it didn't matter.

I was playing "The General." The guy who ran things, the guy who had to keep it all going. I had at my command a sexy blonde babe and her pal, a hunchbacked circus dwarf/baggage handler. The actor playing the dwarf, while short, stood well within "normal" height range. He didn't believe in "faking" anything on stage so his dwarfishness and the huched-back part of his performance would have to come out of his intense "search" for his character in the rehearsal process.

A few other human oddities worked for me in this place. I've forgotten them, now.

As with a lot of Hollywood movies from the 30s, 40s and some early live television that had been cribbed from Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s, there were also a few travelers that showed up at this strange facility. These were people who suddenly found themselves in this terminal. “They’re waiting, see...?”

“Waiting for what?”

“Well! I don't know...for a plane...a journey someplace, someplace, I don't know where..."

Like that.

“Are they dead...”

“Maybe they're dead!” Ivan told us. “Maybe they're not. Great, huh?”

“Is this sort of...well... Existential?”

“...”

“Like, say, ‘No Exit’ or somthing...?”

“Well...no...”

Anyway. I had a lot of speeches. Long speeches. I got to roam the playing area -- I climbed to the rafters on scaffolding, chasing my dwarf, I crawled the floors like an agonized serpent, or a uniformed Caliban sans-fins. I oozed up through trapdoors -- which were real -- rats and bugs at my heels -- also real. I wandered among the imagined audience-to-be no doubt making people nervous that I was going to make them do something silly (assaulting the audience was big in those days).

I got to deliver one very gentle, very soft speech while standing over our sleek blonde flight attendant, Lisa (heroin-chic before there was a Calvin Klein) -- while slowly slipping both hands down the front of her dress, finishing the thing while kneading her exceptionally chic-to-imaginary breasts...

You had to have been there.

All right? I was embarrassed by almost everything I had to do in this show. I had, however, committed to doing it. Ah well.

Opening night. Of all things, we had a full house. It was packed. Mostly paper, but it was full of Fritz's family, chums, the cast's pals, guys from Temple, former teachers. The range.

I told my wife to wait...wait until it settles in...

Uniquely, I was not nervous. I usually have stage fright that pushes the edge of cardiac infarction. That’s when I care, of course.

About this... Well, I wasn’t nervous. The rest of the cast went through the usual backstage verbal, physical and psychological hoop-jumps, the stuff that makes being backstage early a the run feel like you’re in the waiting room at a vet's office.

Ivan had pulled strings. He'd gotten a whole mob of his rock'n'roll pals and associates to Philly and to this thing. Most disturbing of all, the press was there -- the Daily News, Inquirer, Daily Planet, all the local and out of town papers were covering this little event!

Shit. I was finished.

I did the show stops pulled. Balls out. Hannibal Lector on a buzz trip, bennies, downers, uppers, screamers. Shameless. Shameless.

Somewhere in there, I lost myself. Somewhere in the midst of it all, I dropped off the face of friggin' Philadelphia and into some other place. I don't know if it was Ivan's Terminal, but it wasn't Etage under the Ben Franklin bridge.

Then the thing was over. We took our bows and got ready to party.

I came up for air, changed out of the costume -- my old Air Force officer's uniform (I say it was my old "officer's uniform" because, while I was but a Sergeant in the USAF in Europe, my officially designated work uniform was that of an Air Force Captain. I'll explain that another time) -- shoved my hair back, slipped upstairs from the basement green room and joined the party. Maybe nobody'd notice.

Live band. Lotsa booze. Catered. Good grub. Well-dressed audients and class-act dishes. Mainline slinks and uptown slipperies.

I avoided my fellow Terminalites. By this time, I didn't much like them, and they were, mostly, afraid of me.

I grabbed a dozen 7-oz Rolling Rock ponies, and slipped into the front lobby where it was quiet and dark.

Sulking.

The party was a muffled headache away. I snuggled over by the window that looked over the street, the dirty street by the River, and sucked down a couple Rocks.

Ahhh. Good.

I had no idea she had arrived. I turned and there she was. She was funny looking, bony, angular. She was in a kind of combination hip-hop, shimmy shammy, snuggle-up twitchy state. It seemed focused on me. She stood inches from my face and gushed. Her head wig-wagged back and forth as she oozed about my...my performance....one foot, the other foot. I was really, oh man you gotta know but probably don't know because you were so far in it there, but you really gotta know what you did there and I want to tell you you were just mind-blowing, man, fucking great. Like fucking THAT great.

Her eyes gripped mine, held through all her twitchings, rockings and bobbings. Somehow her eyes...her eyes locked onto mine...her eyes never moved, lidded, sexy, sensual...despite it all...they hung on...she vibrated...here eyes were quiet, waiting...that was it...then she waited with...waited with...waited...with her eyes.

"Thank you," I said. I thought that was appropriate. Thought that was about right. "Uh-huh... thanks. Glad you enjoyed."

No. I didn't think, "enjoyed" was the word, not the kind of thing "Terminal" was about... Enjoyment. No.

Then she slipped away.

I was flattered.

A bit confused. I was taken by this funny person's ability to flow in and out, go with the mood and be gone with the music beating at the walls from inside the theater.

"Well, okay," I said to myself, "how bad could I have been?"

How bad could I have been?
Fluffed with myself, I went back to the party.

When I got back, my dwarf and chic Lisa (who, since the first week of rehearsals seemed to have become joined at the groin), snatched me into a corner. Asked what she had said, what had she said...?

“Who?”

“Patti for Christ-sake.”

“Who Patti? Patti who?”

“Patti Smith, Christ! What had she said?”

“Oh. Uh...she liked it.”

I had no idea. At the time (and to this day deep inside my soul of souls) I consider any music written after1850 to be the spiritual precursor to the fall of civilization, Armageddon's marching tunes.

At this time, Patti Smith was only a step beyond being a proto-punk poet and crypto-neuve-wavo journalist cum Sam Shepard fuckee from deepest New Jork City.

She had, however, just cut a first record. She was a growing legend. Noted and known. And (best of all) known in only the hippest circles. Which, of course, most certainly did not include me.

My "Terminal" colleagues -- in the hippest of circles -- could scarcely believe that I didn't know who she was. Some proclaimed me to be feigning a greater ignorance than that which I possessed.

Terminal got lousy reviews.

I got a few good ones -- of the "one bright-spot-in-this-dark-and-dismal-night" variety.

...and that was that.

I watched Patti Smith with some interest after that. Then I forgot her.

In recent years, I've listened. I've come to appreciate her. I like her work. I like thinking about her. I've seen her, since. Actually gotten her autograph -- been that close. I never said what I wanted to say: "Hi. I'm Larry Santoro. You're a big fan of mine." I'm glad I didn't.

But! I wish her enthusiasm at the time had given me an appreciation of me at the time.

It did not do that.

Alas.
All images of Patti Smith are by Robert Maplethorpe

Pictures

2006-03-21T16:01:00.000-06:00

I suppose it's because I'm still in awe of Alan Clark's wonderful painting for "...North of Nowhere" but I've been thinking about illustration lately.

My wife's father, William White, was a wonderful painter and illustrator. We're lucky to have quite a few of his pieces on our walls--what's left of our walls, that is, after book- and dvd-shelves have had their way with our vertical surfaces. One of my favorites is this...

If you look carefully at the bottom of the mirror -- just to the right of the center bulb -- you'll see a man's face staring at you. That's Bill White painting the picture.

Some day this painting will be a story. I'll get it right...I really will!

For obvious reasons, I love this one as well...

See? Every year, Bill painted a portrait of his little girl. This is one from her late 20s. She'd just returned home from Canada and was an unhappy woman... But I love her face in this. I love her hair. I love her...well of course.

Middle American Debris

2006-03-17T17:42:00.000-06:00

Middle American Debris by Alan M. Clark
Alan Clark's cover illustration for my first novel, "Just North of Nowhere," due out in late '06 from Annihilation Press.

"Just North of Nowhere" will be Bluffton in print -- finally!

Alan is one of the best in the business and I'm pleased as hell to have his work fronting this book. This is the second piece of mine that Alan has illustrated. Take a look below...the image on top of the entry "Where Did It Come From?" That's his illustration for "So Many Tiny Mouths."

As this place is called "At Home in Bluffton," I suppose you realize that Bluffton has been in my head and heart for a decade or so. Middle American Debris -- Alan's job title for the painting -- is a central image of "The Ninth Goddamned Kid," a key chapter of the book. So there it is! I can see it at last and I can't wait for you to read it!

Hell, I can't wait to read it!

Take a look at Alan's website: http://www.ifdpublishing.com/art/ ...he's got a lot of incredible work there.

Me Descending

2006-03-10T17:39:00.000-06:00

Wayne Allen Sallee took this...returning the favor, I guess.

This is me going down the spiral stairway into my back yard. My writer pal Wayne Allen Sallee seems to love taking pictures from above or below, looking up people's noses and the like. By request, I took one of him on this same stairway a few years ago. It looks as though he's descending into a sewer or down a steel rabbit hole. He uses it as the image on his business cards.

The planter and trellis are no longer there. Instead we have fountains and faux inlaid stone. I didn't do it. I don't own the place I just live here. I've lived here, in fact, longer than I've lived anywhere in my life. This is about 100 feet from the spot where the little girl's body was found during the razing of an old three-floor wood frame building. She became "Little Girl Down the Way."

For No Particular Reason

2006-03-09T08:03:00.000-06:00

Wayne at his art!

This is my favorite picture of Wayne Allen Sallee. He's reading at Twilight Tales.

Having posted this one of him, It is my hope that he'll return the favor and post one of me reading at the same place.

Wayne!?

Too good to not post!

2006-03-06T16:34:00.000-06:00

Too good to pass up...thanks Wayne.

This is m'self and a dude who calls himself "the Ed Wood of the 90s"

The photo was taken at a little film festival in Chicago in 2004 and Mr. Wood-be was still calling himself that. Ah well.

Wayne Allen Sallee took the picture. Later that evening, Wayne found himself in a hot tub with two Hollywood stars!

Little Girl Down the Way, or Maybe you don't want to know this!

2006-03-03T17:39:00.000-06:00

My experience has been that when people ask, “Where do your ideas come from?” they really don’t want to know.

For instance: Eight years ago I wrote a story called "Little Girl Down the Way." I submitted it once and it came back. I wasn't surprised or disappointed. "Little Girl..." is a brutal story about the murder of a 7 year old who lived and died -- 40-plus years ago -- just down the way from my apartment in Chicago.

Her passion and death happened decades before I moved into the neighborhood but the Little Girl’s remains weren't unearthed until 9 years ago. The facts of the matter stirred me to write a story in which an unwanted child is hidden in a basement by her mother and, ultimately, is killed by her. The story is seen from the point of view of the little girl who, every day, awakens into the hell of an afterlife and re-lives the nightmare of her life and death. Day after day the years of torment are revisited but never does she give up on the notion that her mother loves her. The story, finally, is a view of how hell and heaven can be the same place in the same time depending on your point of view.

Unpublished, un-circulated, “Little Girl…” was content to live in my trunk. It had lots of company.

A few months ago, "Twilight Tales" asked if I had something they could produce as a podcast for their online magazine. I gave them a choice of one thing or another thing.

They chose the other thing: "Little Girl..." The producer, David Munger, did a great job with a difficult piece. Here's the url...go listen to it, I'll wait for you: http://www.twilighttales.com/podcast/

Okay?

A short time after it was 'cast, I got a letter. A listener who wrote to say that the story disturbed him -- in the good way that horror should disturb you -- and that, as a father, he’d listened to it several times and found himself both moved and trembling each time.

I thanked him for his kindness and for taking time to write. In return, I gave him a few paragraphs on the background to the story -- just a bit more than I gave you above.

A return email said, in essence: Well! I'm sorry I know that, I thought this came out of your head!

He included a little electric *sigh* somewhere in there -- vexation I guess at finding my murdered Little Girl to be a child of the world not entirely of my imagination. The father in him didn’t want to know that such things happen.

Okay, his disappointment was my fault: I volunteered the information. I guess I understand but see, I think people really don't want to know where the ideas come from.

So, if you've listened to "Little Girl..." would you want to know how close to reality that piece was?

Let me know.

Tycelia at Christmas

2006-03-03T16:06:00.000-06:00

This is my wife, Tycelia...there's a long, long story about how we finally got together. I'll actually write it sometime!

An evolving novel set in the LOST universe

2006-02-01T09:51:00.000-06:00

Four of the LOST: FAITH authors in Chicago: L-R Wayne Allen Sallee, Lawrence Santoro, Roger Dale Trexler, Martin Mundt. Below, the late John Eveson, an author in life, a character in death...killed in the second episode, remembered in the sixth.

This is an unashamed pitch for attention.

During the December/January hiatus of ABC TV's monster hit, LOST, one of the show's websites, "The Tailsection," began posting an evolving novel, LOST: FAITH.

Set on the island, the events of LOST: FAITH take place before the crash of Oceanic 815. According to the creators of the storyline, "The idea was to craft a mythology connected to the show's locale but outside the events of the ABC program."

Here's the kicker:

It is September 11th, 2001. News of the terrorist attacks in the United States reaches the passengers aboard Pacific Blue flight 442 en-route to the US from Thailand. The flight continues as a fissure of fear, rage, and paranoia opens. Soon, the unthinkable happens...

LOST: FAITH is a collaborative project among several writers. Each author is crafting a character and an 'episode' of varying lengths.

I am pleased to be one of those writers.

My character, Maxwell Peter Donnithorne, is a world-class concert flutist who was returning to the United States from a cross-cultural seminar in Bali. Recovering gradually from the shock of the crash and his injuries, Max believes himself to have been a person apart from the mass hysteria onboard flight 442 which precipitated the crash. Gradually, he comes to realize that the island will not let him be alone here -- not even in his own skin.

Veteran horror author Wayne Allen Sallee is one of the creators of the series, a contributor and is acting as story supervisor. Other writers include Roger Trexler, Sidney Williams and Jon Lachonis.

"The Tailsection" is at: http://www.thetailsection.com/

I hope you'll stop by LOST: FAITH and have a read. It's at: http://www.thetailsection.com/lost_faith/downloads.html

WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

2006-01-24T14:26:00.000-06:00

Some fetchin's

Alan M. Clark's illustration for "So Many Tiny Mouths" Alan's an incredible artist who will be doing the cover illustration for my first novel, "Just North of Nowhere," due out in late 2006 from Annihilation Press. Check out Alan's website at: http://www.ifdpublishing.com/

The post below was an afterword to my damn-near-Stoker-nominated story, "So Many Tiny Mouths" when it was published in Feral Fiction. Here it is:

"So Many Tiny Mouths," has fetchings.

Pennsylvania, 1950-something.

Summers, the parents and I would hop into the old man’s green-over-cream ‘53 Belle-Air and head for pre-Trump Atlantic City. We’d make the Delaware crossing into Jersey on the Chester-Bridgeport Ferry and two hours later our first half-dozen layers of winter skin would be bubbling off as we yanked fillings out of our head with Steel Pier salt water taffy.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... Slow down. Before the shore, we had to get there. After that ferry crossing? Most of my kidhood, I spent those 70 non-air conditioned miles stuck in the back seat meditating on being ground under by Atlantic Ocean rollers or being impaled, barefooted, by my first horseshoe crab tail of summer?

It was only later I noticed that most of the trip was through trees; a corridor of trees.

Later still, I learned the whole of central Jersey was a damn geo-political entity: The Pine Barrens. The Barrens, so-called, was a land of trackless forest inhabited by strange six-fingered native folk who lived in caves in the wild wood, prayed to odd and grubby gods, who made their own gas from pig shit and sometimes ate lost travelers. Pineys, they called themselves.

Much later, I made a now long-gone documentary film about the region called “...Where the Sun Never Shines.” Sadly, while shooting the film I found Pineys to be normal, garden-variety Americans. Use your own personal demons to inform what image that conjures.

The people stay to themselves, they are independent-minded and don’t care to be fussed over. They do a lot for themselves that most of us gave up doing a generation or so ago and they have curious and spooky tales to tell.

The Piney’s world is deep evergreen forest and sand trails no wider than a small sedan; it is small streams and cedar swamps, it smells of sphagnum moss, decay and other forest things. Moving through this world, a stranger navigates by compass, odometer and a U.S. Geodetic Survey map. Chatsworth is real, the ‘Capital of the Pines.’ Ghost and Forgotten towns dot the maps. Places like Ong’s Hat and Hog Wallow do – did -- exist and someday I’ll do justice to the quiet, the sense of the old, the past, the never will-be that stands behind one who stands at one of those five-point crossings in the woods.

There are economic, political and social reasons why this area, despite being at the beating steel- and concrete-heart of the Megalopolis, has remained relatively green, human-free and “unimproved.” These reasons are not part of the tale of this tale’s fetchin’s, however.

Point is, I liked the Pines. I enjoyed meeting the people and managed, actually, to learn a little about them. I set one science fiction story, “Veterans,” there and, later -- on a roll of having sold two original screenplays, bing/bing, like that -- adapted it for film. “Veterans: the Movie” remains unproduced, unsold. Oh well.

The Pines is a hard area to get right. One truly GOOD writer I know of set a story there and I thought he missed it. One of the best episodes of HBO’s “The Sopranos” was called “The Barrens.” Their Jersey Wiseguys were money-on as strangers in a strange land, but not only did they not shoot it in the Pines, they set it in generic woodlands, a place without even a passing similarity to the Pines.

When I was asked to submit to an anthology of tales on a theme of fang and talon, somehow the Pines entered my head -- still bristling about that unproduced film, I guess. I kept thinking I wanted to do another story there. Okay. Two salient features of the Barrens are: pine trees and sand. Trees with talons might be interesting, but I opted to give the sand some teeth.

The anthology didn’t take the story. They were right not to. On the first pass, I focused the tale on the tourists from Philly. I was more comfortable, I guess, writing from the backseat of that ‘53 Chevy.

So, here’s my second Pine Barrens story, re-thought. I pulled off the road and listened to some of the people I half-way knew when I was making that documentary.

By the way, Earl Sooey, the coot through whose eye we watch the world end? He’s based on no one; just a fiction; a coincidence, really.

One Year and a Little More...

2006-01-24T13:54:00.000-06:00

One year and a little more since my last post.

Several things: I almost got another Stoker nomination. I didn’t get the nomination but the story, “So Many Tiny Mouths,” did get an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s YEAR’S BEST HORROR AND FANTASY anthology. A pretty good little tale, if I do say so: a pleasant little end-of-the-world tale set in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey – one of my favorite places. I spent months there back in the late 60s doing a documentary film. More about that, anon.

The near-Stoker thing got me an invitation to submit a story to an anthology-to-be of zombie stories.

Now, I can’t recall having actually read, much less written, a zombie story. I did have a few friends back in Pennsylvania who’d been living-dead extras in George Romero’s low-budget, albeit groundbreaking original “Night of the Living Dead.” I had actually seen the film -- and, with help, was to pick out some of my pals lurking under the prosthetics and makeup.

Point being: Zombie is a genre I neither know nor embrace.

Oh...right...I’d also seen the re-do of “Night...” which co-starred another friend, Tom Towles, from my Organic Theater days...and, now that I’m on the subject, I do remember having seen “I Walked with a Zombie,” but that hardly counts...

Back on track: I said, “yes.” Of course I did! How often does a previous and near-miss Stoker nominee get asked?

At first I thought I’d set it in Bluffton. I didn’t – more about that at another time!

I didn’t because something buzzed in me. I was on a Sunday afternoon skim of Powell’s Bookstore on 57th, by the University of Chicago, and found an intriguingly titled and arrestingly laid-out book, “Harry's War, Experiences In The 'Suicide Club' In World War One.” “Harry’s War...” was an oblong thing, a facsimile of a diary, with color sketches by the diarist, about life in the trenches. It tweaked something. I flashed on Mr. Boyer’s world history classes at Reading Senior High. The memories prodded research. I dove into World War I history, tunneling and mining strategy, walking tours of the front, pre-Second World War German mysticism. It went on. Norman Boyer would have been proud! A dozen books later, I wrote “Wind Shadows,” a zombie tale utterly without mention of the word!

I’m looking forward to AIM FOR THE HEAD -- should be out in late 2006. Hope you’ll look for it too.

Another thing: One of my vile stories, a trunk tale called “Little Girl Down the Way,” has become a Twilight Tales podcast. It’s at http://www.twilighttales.com/podcast/ That’s not me reading it, but the TT podcast host, David Munger, does a pretty good job with a damn difficult piece. Hope you’ll listen.

This is getting to be too long and meandering but it has been over a year.

I’ll try to do better in 2006.

Kelly Goldberg

2005-01-18T12:03:00.000-06:00

Kelly...walking off

I heard a few days ago. Kelly Goldberg died. Known on the page as d.g.k. goldberg, Kelly was the first member of the Horror Writers Association I met at my first national convention. We spent the evening in the bar of the hotel in Providence, RI. We both had other places to go but, for myself, I couldn't tear away! She was funny, smart, self-effacing, witty, bitchy (in the best southern way) and positively adorable! Who could leave?!

I have no idea why she stuck at the table with me, but it was for none of the reasons above. She was drinking pink things, that was part of it. That, according to her, always allowed a southern woman to say anything she damn-well wanted and still remain a lady.

Over the years we became friends, meeting only at conventions across the country, speaking occasional on the phone. We emailed--sometimes obsessively–on politics, personalities, NASCAR racing (about which she knew everything and I knew nothing!), writing. The range was wide and she was, as always, funny, smart, self-effacing, witty and adorably bitchy (in the best southern way).

We (at Feral Fiction) published one of her last stories, “Tea in Kensington Garden,” ironically a ghost story.

Damn. Kelly makes me wish for ghosts, for real ones.

At Home in Bluffton

Tales to Terrify is now live...

Root Soup, Winter Soup at Tuesday Funk

An Ancient Mariner... Indeed, Mr. Chwedyk.

A Question for My Readers

Now on Kindle...

It's here...

A Winter's Tale

"Drink..." at the Pre-Release Price!

Drink for the Thirst to Come

Catching Up

Come have a listen...

Release Party for CCLaP's AMERICAN WASTELAND

Book Signing via the Post

Reader review of JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE

Now on Kindle...

JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE...soon in ebook form

American Gods Contest

DOWN...

Are you listening?

A Word from the World

Now It May Be Told

Narrator's Workshop - Level 1

JACK VANCE AND FRED POHL ON THE STARSHIPSOFA

THE ANNUAL SOFANAUT AWARDS - 2011

Hidden Sky

Off to World Fantasy and Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva

A Promo? Really? Yes, a Promo....and more

StarShipSofa Stories - Volume 2 Has Arrived

StarShipSofa Stories - Volume 2

StarShipSofa Wins a Hugo AND Publishes Another Book!

StarShipSofa Wins a Hugo

Finished...for now

Still Editing Parts of the Collection

More about DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME

Drink for the Thirst to Come

Let's Get Podcast StarShipSofa a Hugo Nomination

The Audio Site Is Now Up

Soon... Soon...

As Seen on TV

FiNAL WORDS ON LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION -- MAYBE

Just another day plus...

The Print Version of LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION

FINISHING UP LORD DICKENS...

Best of StarShipSofa 2010

Still working on LORD DICKENS...

LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION - Now up and running...

For those who like Crumhorns and Shawn, Dufay Collective is good... and a brief update on LORD DICKENS...

LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION

StarShipSofa Stories - the Hardcover

The Smell of Clove

Here's the story...

Progress Report #2

More about STARSHIPSOFA STORIES VOLUME 1

StarShipSofa Stories

A Quick Note

A Visit from a Colleague...a Friend

"Then, Just a Dream"

It's all done with Skype

"Just North of Nowhere"

A WORD FROM THE WORLD

Bluffton South and West

Now YOU Read Like a Motherfucker!

Read Like a Motherfucker

A Cover Adjustment to ISBN - 0-9779049-1-1

A Preliminary Look at ISBN - 0-9779049-1-1

A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY - The Flip-Side

Another Book, Upcoming Readings and Some Added News

A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY

JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE

This WILL Make Sense

Deep in the Heart of Texas

*SIGH*

LITTLE GIRL

Control Alt Delete Democracy

Custodians of Chaos

More of the Toxic Ms...

Ann Coulter is a Clown...

Word Eater

Hazel's Dunes Shack

SIGH