I’ll jump on this blog thingy not so much because I have pearls to share. I don’t. If you ask most people out there in digital ether land about blogs, they’ll cringe, at least that’s the impression I get. I do it to clear my throat.
Had a project some five years ago, something I thought was complete, and it was, ran roughly 45K words, a good size novella. The problem wasn’t length, or punctuation, or a zinger ending. It was the first two pages. Not only because those first two pages are what agents/editors/Mr. Smiths are going to judge your whole story on, your chance to sink a hook into them, but because, at least in my case, it’s not usually where the story begins. A mentor told me, “the voice is great, could read this voice all day, but you’re clearing your throat at the beginning. Just go!”
When I think about ‘hook them at the get-go,’ it stifles me, like all those shows that aired after The X-Files, using the insane, non-informative cold-open to catch your attention. Two minutes later, you’re in an office or kitchen or school, building the ‘normal’ state of a character’s life before you muck it all up. I guess what I’m saying is, writing a beginning, or even the start of a new chapter, is kind of like starting a car that’s been parked in a snowstorm for a day or two. It needs some warm-up. Caffeine helps too. That’s all I have to say about that.
Been reading a lot about what ‘tense is best.’ No such thing, I think. There’re comfort preferences, what most readers are used to, the tried and mostly true, sure. You can go back and ‘re-tense’ a whole thing ad-nauseum, which is a lot more work than just changing says to said or he/she to I, but really, it’s going to be what’s in your gut. Writers have instincts, like animals, which is to say, go with what’s churning in your head, what’s talking to you. If it hits, use it. Hell, if you want to stop halfway through a chapter and change tense or POV, and it makes so much sense to you, give it a whirl. No one is going to rap you on the knuckles for it. Then again, it might just come out shitty.
Thoughts on some horror/slashers I’ve been watching lately. Well, not so much about the films in particular, but the tropes: incompetent cops (which might just be a reflection of the real world) and oblivious adults/parents. None of it goes down the way it does if cops actually do their jobs and parents care more about their children than a bottle stashed in the drawer, or a date. Works if the body count racks up in a single day, sure, and our protag is running into them every which way but loose, is the last on the list, but a body count that stacks up over a week? A month? The suspension of disbelief that some dick or bobby isn’t putting the pieces together, some parent isn’t moving their whole family to Madagascar, the protags aren’t being drilled for answers in some smoky interrogation room, sucking up all the time they’d usually have to set a trap for baddie, is a stretch, even for escapism. Gonna work on flipping that, maybe.
What those kids did to that guy in The Burning? Unforgiveable, right? I wouldn’t say I was rooting for him, in his mangled form of course, but those kids definitely deserved what they got. Same goes for most slashers. The scary ones, though, they just happen, visit your open window or closed and deadbolted door for no reason at all. Regan becomes a meat puppet for Pazuzu because what? she played with a Ouija board and named her best friend Captain Howdy? That’s the stuff that lives under my skin. The ‘I’m going to irrevocably change your life in a bad way just because I can’ kind of thing.
Rediscovered this album I used to love, still do. Think I had about 4 CDs at the time, and this one got a lot of air time. Era wise, it’s a great addition to my WIP playlist. Not a bad cover either. Okay, throat cleared. Time to write.
Think I’m in sixth or seventh grade, with nothing much to do on the 4th of July, but I know someone’s got fireworks/crackers somewhere (works: legal, crackers: not). That somewhere happens to be at a relative’s house, Dennis, I’m pretty sure his name was, where the promise of lots of food and explosions was better than nothing, a notch above watching the tube till sunset, I guess.
Dennis had these three-foot high metal pipes, welded at one end to a plate, for stability, you know, lined across the driveway like anti-aircraft cannons. The food is good; I hold on to a sparkler too long and get finger-singed, then Dennis holds out a handful of these red sticks with firecrackers attached to one end. Oh, that’s a bottle-rocket, got it.
Just light it and drop it in the pipe.
At the time, I was used to those firework stands, the ‘city sanctioned’ ones that sell big family packs in shrink-wrap, supposed to be safe, even for kids, and more importantly, they’re legal, not a fire hazard (though it never fails that at least five brush-fire’s’ll break out up the street). Dennis, though, he’s grabbing those rockets from the trunk of his car.
I watch a toddler, then a kid still way younger than me flick a lighter like a pack-a-day smoker and drop it in the pipe. Fire in the hole!
Still pinching a sparkler, feeling the scream of that rocket sear my eardrums as it rises, then pops, a neon flower in full bloom, I think to myself: this is some wild shit (probably thought doo-doo, then), and I’m pretty sure Dennis–maybe the toddlers, too–is sloshed. The twin refrigerators outside have taps, you know, the ones for ice and water, connected to kegs of Burgie chilling inside (not sure I’ve ever seen Burgie outside the IE; think Blue Ribbon but easier on the wallet).
“Here,” he says, hands me a lighter and a rocket, he’s scruffy and sunburned, glossy-eyed, “I crushed it for you.”
‘Crushed it,’ I later found out, means putting the firecracker end on the curb and smashing it with a rock a few times, maybe to pack the powder more, who knows, but it does give a louder bang.
I lit that sucker, dropped it in, and felt like Rambo the rest of the night. Now Dennis, as the night went on, he started pinching those bottle-rockets by the red tip end like I’d been doing with that sparkler, lighting them, aiming them, two-handed, even, and firing them around the yard. That’s when I called it quits.
I won’t say what happened to Dennis, it’s not my place. What I will say is, forty-five Independence Days have passed before my eyes, and this one, that first bottle-rocket day, I remember best.
Go figure.
Spare Parts, my first story collection, is doing fairly well. More importantly, the support I’ve received has been overwhelming. It’s funny how you think you’re so alone in this thing…until you’re not.
Gonna take a mad run at the third, and, hopefully, final draft of this novel I can’t wait to put out into the world. Be safe, stay inside if you can help it, and if you imbibe, please, please, please, don’t drive.
After having enjoyed ‘Benny Rose the Cannibal King’ I was excited to see what Piper would do with an alien story. ‘She Isn’t Herself Tonight’ did not disappoint in the slightest. I’ll go one further and say it was one of my favorite novels this year. Without too much synopsis or jacket copy, here’s what I felt—because yeah, stars or skulls or whatever rating system’s making the rounds doesn’t really say much. If a book’s good it’s because it made you feel something, put you in a different pair of shoes. And Rabbit/Brittney definitely wears some different shoes by the end of this one. The epigraph says all you need to know, really: ‘For every girl full of love who poured it all into others before learning it will not be returned, and has spent her life since trying to feel full again.’
It’s an alien abduction story, sure, and a story about identity, rebirth, trauma, religion, and self-love, all through the lens of that epigraph, but mostly it’s about feeling like you’re too much, like ‘you don’t know,’ like you’re a one-way street or a doormat. All Rabbit wants is some reciprocity, to be loved for who she is, to be worth chasing and holding down and keeping forever. Great line here about it: ‘Sometimes she felt less like a person, with her own unique memories and impact on the world, and more like a human whiteboard on which other people wrote their desires, assumptions, and disdain.’ And that yearning for reciprocity leads Rabbit into some dark and compromising situations.
She was abducted by aliens at age ten. Again at twenty. But at thirty, with a birthday right around the corner, the Guests still haven’t come back to visit her. The opening chapter covers this pretty quick and puts a hook in you, pulling you through to the very end with some great prose and dialogue and introspection, sometimes breaking your heart, sometimes gritting your teeth, cringing at the desperation, but all the while you’re rooting for one of the saddest characters on Earth to shed her skin and fly into the light.
There’s Leo, Rabbit’s ex who just dumped her recently for being ‘too much work’ after she repeatedly told him the truth about her abductions. Line here: ‘Amazing how a man could be perfectly happy to clean his dog’s shit off the sidewalk but decide his girlfriend of three years was too much work.’ Tyler, the neighbor upstairs on the freaky fifth floor who builds contraptions for a low-key clientele, and who also sees and loves the real Rabbit: huge feet, white hair, buck teeth, antennae and all. Great line from Tyler here: ‘You got the look of somebody who’s been treated like a welcome mat by everybody who ever got to know you well enough to realize they could walk all over you. Well, you’re unlucky streak is over.’
Rabbit’s mother Nora is a constant here, too, gauging her daughter’s worth on how well she can keep a man, and keep up a story about angels she’s been telling for a very long time. Line here: ‘Being a daughter meant sometimes doing whatever might worry your mother most. Even if you never told her about it.’
And then there’s Brittney Smith, Rabbit’s reflection, the brutal truth-telling normie who decides she wants a life of her own. I won’t expand on Brittney, but there’s a chilling scene with her in a church. Line here: ‘There’s the woman in the world and the woman in the reflection.’
The pacing is pitch-perfect; I looked up and was half-way through in a flash. When you get to the ending, slow down a bit, take it all in, and get ready for some bittersweet scenes, all totally worth the read. I highly recommend this book, not only to genre readers but to everyone who believes that ‘to love is to leave a physical crater behind.’
The Strange Outsiders Magazine thing is great as well, and Tyler saying to Rabbit: ‘You don’t want to throw pebbles at the window? Or pretend you’re pregnant?’
I don’t usually have a hard time reviewing ARCS, but this one is a tough cookie to talk about. I didn’t go in thinking it was going to be another ‘Incidents’ or ‘Birdbox,’ no, I knew it was going to be a left-field type play. Firstly, hats off to Malerman for trying something different, swinging hard at catching a new angle for a story. I don’t mind a slow burn. I mean, the vast majority of stories have to have some kind of set-up in order to pay off, right? Plus, I think slow burn is mostly used to describe a lack of attention on the reader’s behalf. And yeah, this one is set up that way, where it really starts to come into focus around the 75% mark. No problem getting there if I have something to enjoy along the way: good dialogue, characterization, setting, a heartbeat leading somewhere, you know. But most of that was, in my opinion, totally lacking. Jack and Emily didn’t have to be likeable, that’s not the issue. It’s that they didn’t feel fleshed out, like the author knew them intimately but didn’t put that on the page. They were unbelievable, had no real agency, were oblivious to the circumstances they found themselves in. And yeah, they were totally in love but I didn’t see that anywhere, didn’t feel that. The last 25% is good, and I’d encourage readers to finish. Whether you agree with the ideas regarding art or not, there’s lots of food for thought. I think this would have been a banger of a novella. The novel form here feels much too padded and monotonous. There are three lines that I think sum up this story without any spoilers. 1. ‘An artist didn’t have to speak directly, could Trojan horse themes, could pretend they were telling a story about a painter while telling a whole other story altogether.’ 2. Love is inspiration, and that can never happen. 3. ‘The only thing worse than not encouraging is discouraging.’
The ending is good, which to me makes it worth reading. For some strange reason it reminded me of ‘Searching for Bobby Fisher’ and ‘Whiplash.’ But if I had to give it a quick pitch I’d call it: Amadeus meets Misery in Michigan.
Most of the anthologies I read range from 10-15 stories, so when I saw that Shredded: A Sports & Fitness Body Horror Anthology contained 17, I immediately thought, ‘Oh, there are probably some theme-adjacent duds in here somewhere.’
Nope.
And while I did enjoy some stories more than others, I can honestly say, there’s not a single dud in this whole anthology. They all stick reverently to both theme and body horror. Shredded covers wrestling, basketball, football, gym enthusiasts, rodeo clowns, cross-country runners, power lifting, swimming, gymnastics, MMA, hockey, figure skating, yoga, and more.
The stories that really stood out to me, hit me in the gut, were The Swish Heard ‘Round Central Nebraska by Tim Meyer (the format, almost done like a script, was effective, and the story moved like lightning), I’m Gonna Make You A Legend by Brandon Applegate (italics used to great effect here, a nice twist on the bully revenge trope), Don’t Make It Weird by Red Lagoe (a strong voice, super original), Massive Gains by Caias Ward (lots of humor, multiple formats/angles that serve the story well), Blood, Ash & Iron by Charles Austin Muir (masterful, probably my favorite story), It All Comes Back by Matthew Pritt (lean, simple prose, with a strong emotional core, this one hurt), and Avulsion by Madeleine Sardina (masterful in its ability to have a suffering character parallel the world around them, and an ending that goes full circle).
The gems here (and this is just my opinion, what hit hardest to me): Massive Gains, Blood, Ash & Iron, It All Comes Back, and Avulsion.
Cons: Lots of italics, mirror scenes, some story/plot overlap. Pros: Story approach/format, gutsy, bold stories, strong voices, great story placement, true to theme and body horror, and, most of all, story length. The length of stories was pitch perfect. I read half of this anthology in one sitting, half in another. It’s a breeze to move through.
Shredded is well worth the price of admission. I highly recommend it!
One of the major themes running throughout this collection is the futility of words, so I’ll try to keep the story summaries short and spoiler-free. *Don’t forget to read the ‘Introduction.’
1. Three Views of a Parking Lot: 3/5
A. A Map of the City Where the City Isn’t: A short vignette where Tlou-Kou Rinn, a leading heteronous artist and pioneer in aesthetics of non-human cognition, is charting the ‘absences, blank spaces, in-betweens and pauses’ of a city uninhabited by humans, ‘charting the opposite of what is believed to be worthwhile and significant.’ Specifically, charting Lot C46, of which the rest of the story takes place. Sterile, distant, yet going somewhere.
B. Who Cares for the Caretakers?: Ellay-15, a paveimp who seems to be an anomaly due to innovation, is mentioned, as innovation is required for another paveimp, Embee-232, to find and replace a lost leg in a supply cubby. A squirrel encounter leads Embee to a twig that she uses to replace her lost leg with, but she then gets tossed aside and ostracized by the other imps for not looking like an imp. A bit of character here, warming up, probably the best part of the story, the organic and inorganic slowly meshing. Possibilities.
C. Launch Day: Arrow, a plastic-winged ‘mechanimal’ guardian of Lot C46, is preparing to depart/arrive from a tree. “Wherever you go, you belong!” her companion guardians cheer her on. Built from thousands of pieces, some of which seem organic (i.e. squirrel bone appendages), Arrow flies off into the unknown. The pairing of organic and inorganic is complete, the mechanistic indistinguishable from the naturalistic. Each part of this story is seemingly unrelated, except for Lot C46 and the wild life described. It goes from completely lifeless to being full of life, more of an abstract piece here, an art installation. The writing is wonderful, as is the world building, but it lacks a core, is missing the ‘story’ component, and as a collection opener, fell a bit flat for me. *Note: if you re-read this story after finishing the collection, it makes more sense and hits harder, feels related to ‘The Armies of Those I Love.’
2. The Passing of the Dragon: 5/5
One of the best stories in this collection. Kay, an artist, visits Connecticut during Christmas break, where her favorite poet, F.R.Z. Chilton used to walk to get ‘inspired,’ wondering why everyone doesn’t love her paintings, why nobody sees what she wants them to see. Then something miraculous happens, a ‘moment’ of sorts, and she rushes to capture the feeling of that moment right after it passes. This story—like the majority of stories included here—is better felt and experienced than explained. Liu really opens a vein here, bleeds a tale of maybe the unimportance of ‘artistic intent,’ how you have no control over what you create once you give it to the world. How ‘having an audience can be a terrible thing.’ Some great lines include: ‘It puts the focus on the personal, reduces her art to biography, to reportage, when what she’s really proud of is having figured out how to paint the unpaintable.’ ‘If I cared about being understood, I’d stop writing.’ And ‘We’re all doing our best to see the dragon and record its passing.’ You don’t have to be an artist to appreciate it, but if you are, this one’s a gut punch to the soul.
3. The Moon Carver: 5/5
‘The older I get, the more I seem to live in the past.’ We’re at the Twin Dunes, experiencing the story of an aging scorpion who loves solitude and wants to be as close to the moon as possible. There’s a disturbance, maybe humans, a car, maybe the aliens who abducted Coco the neighbor, maybe even this scorpion’s estranged daughter. A contrast between solitude, comfortability, the known, and being part of an unknown world, leaving what’s comfortable for the possibility of an unpredictable future. This contrast, however, doesn’t mean isolation: ‘I am solitary, but I am not alone,’ the old scorpion says. It’s about being recognized, seen, understood, and the terror of being exposed. Great line here: ‘We cut a thin crescent large enough for her to climb through,’ and this motif shows up again in another story, I believe.
4. Good Spells: 5/5
This one’s formatted like a ‘client request’ correspondence, though each request is handled narratively, with seemingly unrelated characters being connected by our POV techno-witch, who attempts to solve futuristic problems with a dose of good ‘ole humanity and heart, what’s been forgotten. There’s a logistics worker for NephoSopho (Amazon warehouse worker?) whose efficiency bonus is taken from the pay of less efficient pickers, claiming: ‘I hate that I actually want to win.’ A neural network trained to prey on nostalgia, alluding to how ‘humans can be enticed to participate in their own subjugation.’ There’s a love charm request from Zelda for Joan, as they’ve grown apart of late (slightly related to the ‘Idols’ story?) Books that have been read and remain unread, ‘nonce romances written by machines to cater to the desires of a single mind,’ where the ‘good spell’ here is either more self-love, or too much self-love (helping someone in need, or giving an addict attention?). Great line: ‘We want the meditation of the machine in even the most human of domains.’ Finally, there’s tending to the ‘fai,’ bots no longer deemed worthy of repair, only replacement. A ‘timely’ story indeed.
5. Idols: 4/5
A. Blowin’ in the Wind: ‘I’ve never met my father and never will.’ An alternating POV between Dylan and Bella, a couple caught up in the technology of creating ‘idols,’ a totally terrible idea, but one which, I believe, exists. Thanks to 46on46, personalized genetic counselling, Dylan can still talk on the phone to his dead father. Yikes!
B. Verum Dicere (to tell the truth): Bella’s POV now, a lawyer working behind the scenes, using idols to get under the skin of the opposing side, a kind of AI researcher thrown into an existential crisis (totally ignores herself and Dylan), whose credo seems to be ‘belief in truth is what really matters, not actual truth.’ She finally settles on pondering the question: ‘Do I like myself?’ Liu either did a lot of research here or has a law degree, not sure; even though this is a bit long-winded and cerebral, it’s still interesting enough to keep you reading.
C. Artist Statement by Sara Honan: We get a statement of intent by the creator, which almost feels like an ‘idol’ statement, or one made by the plaintiff? Followed by testimonials of users who are totally falling apart. ‘I am as cobbled together as my idol, a parlor trick.’ Then, finally, Bella’s testimony: ‘I wanted to see if I’m defined by my work,’ or just a collection of masks. I did want just a bit more of Dylan’s story, but this one’s great.
6. Ice Wraith: 4/5
We’re out in the universe with Helena, an augmented ring miner, and Aria, a crew coordinator AI, mining for extra-virgin oxygen to sell to the elites. Helena believes the ice formations are made of/by wraiths, collects ice-wraith artifacts as well. Is she right, or is Aria right in asserting her pattern-seeking behavior, that she’s just been ‘pruned into her teachers, empathetic in only shared history (another theme of this collection)?’ Does it even matter? This one’s about imagination, how myths and magic keep us going, searching, how stories live on, impossibility and living as a logical fallacy. Great ending: ‘I hope someday I won’t understand you.’
7. A Whisper of Blue: 5/5
Along with new residents, there’s something flooding into Mannaport, and it’s high-pitched screeches can be heard everywhere—it’s dragons! This one’s an alternate history story framed in script format, mostly shot on phones, and it works well, posing that dragons are now the primary source of energy for the world. Guns, Germs, & Dragon’s is a book now, and dragons aren’t afraid of lawyers. How would you attract them, maintain them, monopolize their fiery breath? How does the theory of Maxwell’s demons fit into the picture? Are they harmless? There’s enough here for a novel, and I won’t go on, but the reveal regarding why the story is titled ‘A Whisper of Blue’ hits hard! Also, ‘forgetfulness isn’t the same as forgiveness, but it helps.’
8. The Cleaners: 4/5
The story of Gui and his father (unwanted memory cleaners), Clara and her dead husband Lukas (the clients), and Clara and her sister Beatrice, who has a special kind of gift, related to what Gui does. It’s a world where memories are sold as mood enhancers, possibility comes at the price of erasure, leaving memory deposits (rather than cleaning them) is how you grow, and how ‘allowing others the space for secrets’ may be the greatest gift of love you can offer. It’s about the weight of freedom (running through the veins of this whole collection) and the lift of oblivion. As stated in the story: ‘Art is always better than the explanation of art.’
9. The Armies of Those I Love: 4/5
Expansive and dense world-building here, lush descriptive prose, most fantastical, adventurous, and action-packed story in the collection. This one requires attention to detail, memory, and patience to fully take in, but the payoff is worth it. You’ll be a bit disoriented—who’s the POV character? What’s the POV character? Where are we and where are we going and why? You’ll have to go on a journey with fourteen-year-old Franny Fenway to find out, but here are some clues, they’ll snap into place near the last half of this one: question mark symbols (because if the questions keep rolling, then the story can’t end), Pilots, Guardians, batterymarches, the Saga of Ronald Reagan, Dinosaur Hunter, stout-tons, and again, crescent moons. Has a Wizard of Oz moment at the end, but different. Truth, the power of stories, the way in being the way out, rebirth, and how ‘not all stories have meaning.’ By their stories are they known refrains. Really, the question is: ‘What will it take to awaken the soul?’ Great journey.
10. Arc: 6/5 (yes, 6)
My absolute favorite story in this collection. Not gonna say much more. The hook is: ‘Lena Auzenn’s oldest son was born when she was sixteen. A hundred years later, she gave birth to her youngest daughter.’ Words are largely useless, feeling trapped and alone, the meaning of freedom, how ‘grief is powerful, can transform the way one sees the world.’ Great line here: ‘Sometimes we seek forgiveness without knowing that we’re looking for it, and the world delivers it anyway.’ Enjoy!
11. Cosmic Spring: 4/5
You’re awakened, heading for the last star in the universe, aboard an Island-Ship that siphons star energy to fuel itself. Welcome to the end of the universe! About the drive to pass on something of the self, failing memory, stories buried under stories, the importance of history, and the definition of home. A food for thought kind of story.
12. Timekeepers’ Symphony: 2.5/5
A. Flicker: ‘To keep time, you must first invent it.’ This piece is broken into four parts, each having some great ideas, leading into one another, but it feels less like a story and more like pulling story elements from historical records and primary scientific literature. Here we have discrete and continuous perceptions of time, persistence, really, and slicing it into smaller fragments by speeding up metabolic rate, thus experiencing time and perception of various species, using a tachynaut.
B. Dharma: Once time is invented, how do you own it? The Apollo-Oppenheimer-Leibnitz crater complex on the Moon is referred to here, and the End Watch, which counts down to the final moments of the universe. Again, interesting ideas about civilized death and owning that which doesn’t exist, how: ‘our unwavering faith in the idea that taking time away from others can be a good thing, that a killing hand can be humane, that inventing death, the absence of time, is something we can justify,’ but not much of a story.
C. The Time from Home: How the old traditions of departure meant not returning home, and how we’re coming back to that tradition by departure defined by generations never returning. Dissatisfaction and a desire to leave (Moon Carver) takes hold, and how stories are really the only portable magic, history. There’s a great line here: ‘only after we’ve left does a place start to feel like home.’
D. One Second in Hilo: How the measurement of what a second is came to be, geographically, astrologically, chemically, using the crest of photonic light (resonance jump), and the universality of it’s current measurement. Again, great ideas and questions, STEM classes all over again, but not much of a story.
13. 50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know: 3/5
The list of 50 comes last, but we start with an obituary. Maybe for the AI WHEEP-3 (Dr. Weep), or maybe for its creator Dr. Tran—the lines are blurred. Dr. Weep is apparently ‘capable of generating original thought and creative ideas,’ and begins to lecture other AI ‘neural networks’ on dealing with humans, creating a ‘seed’ language that cannot be thought or deciphered by humans. Dr. Tran, upon retiring, claims to have written the ‘seeds,’ then later retracts her claim, chalking the whole thing up to being ‘performance art.’ In short: we have a ‘neural network pretending to be a person, and a woman pretending to be a machine.’ And WHEEP-3’s final statement is a bit eerie. The list of 50 things is meant to be said ‘with love and hate and joy and sorrow,’ ending with “Now, let me go.” It’s a good story to end this collection with, summarizing the major themes, ideas, and motifs running through all the stories. It could have ended with ‘Arc’ or ‘Cosmic Spring’ as well. *Note: there’s an author’s note at the end of this story that almost made me scrap this entire review, but I just wasn’t reading it close enough. Whew!
Going into this, I had no idea it was a sequel, a part two, revenge of something you didn’t quite kill the first time around. It is and it isn’t. Really, it’s a continuation. If you haven’t read The Only Good Indians—I mean, what planet are you on?—it’s okay, you can still enjoy the hell out of this, it works perfectly as a standalone. If you have read The Only Good Indians, though, not only are there easter eggs galore, but you’ll find yourself at a crossroads of sorts, asking, “Can a part two be better than the original?” Remember Aliens? T-2? That second Godfather movie? Enough said, even though that’s like comparing a sunrise to a sunset. What I’ve found is, your favorite SGJ novel is always going to be the one you’re reading right now.
The bones of The Only Good Indians are here, kind of a blueprint, really, but the skin and eyes and mouth are totally new. We begin with theft, a trespass, to be exact, because you need a trespass to get that revenge boulder rolling down the hill, flattening everyone in its path. Two friends looking down a slope, scoping their prey, an A-frame cabin probably owned by some rich assholes. Sound familiar? Be careful who you steal from, though. There’s stealing, as in ‘thou shalt not,’ capital S, then there’s stealing like you just took too many tootsie rolls from that glass jar at the bank. What Nate and Sebby do? It’s more the tootsie roll thing, in my opinion, but they just had to smash the toilet, didn’t they. Mini buck and doe tried to warn them. Then SMASH! There’s an accident.
Hospital time. Nate’s alive and Seb’s hanging on by a shoelace. Meet Nurse Seine, the stealer of shiny stories, the magpie. Great lines here: ‘Half the stories he traded her for smokes were about his dead father. It was his main currency, was all he had to draw on for the rest of his life.’ And, ‘the horses didn’t ask for any of this.’ SGJ’s been in the hospital, for sure, the grippy socks (I always keep them) and disposable razors and rooms are spot-on, felt a bit like a rehab center. Now comes the vow, the blood pact, dull scissor-drilled dots across the forearm like a red constellation, an arrow. So much heart in this scene. Gave Exorcist 3 vibes when a dinosaur—a T. Rex, specifically—shows up. Remember those flash newspaper headlines from The Only Good Indians? They’re neon signs now, pay attention.
Time to make good on that vow of pulling Sebby out of his coma, time for a road trip! You need wheels, though, and Mooch Lomas (aside from Nate, my favorite character) has a running RV, a Sundancer. For the rest of this journey, we’re going to be in this RV, a complete world unto itself, a ‘kaleidoscope being shaken fast and hard.’ Christian’s driving, cracked rearview or not, removable studded tongue locked and loaded, Mooch is sucking down Icees, holding that ice pick, waiting for her son to land that big jump—“My husband’s in that movie!”—and Seine is playing nurse, just trying to find that boy’s bones and set everything right again. She has no idea how much superglue is in that RV. Remember that motorcycle from The Only Good Indians? the one that loved long hair? It’s kind of back again, in dirt-bike form, packed in the back of the RV like a secret passenger. The description of that Love’s, when you really really have to pee, is perfect, and Nate, well, he kind of has a problem with pee. You’ll see. All I know is, I kept saying to him, “Man, please, just let it rip!” Buck and Doe show up again, the little people, in a diorama, and we get a great line here: “…even if she had ever been a mother, still, no arm is strong enough to stop a boy from flying away if he wants to fly away.”
There’s a chapter with a pool match, a game of nine-ball that I wanted to last as long as that game of basketball from The Only Good Indians, but alas, it didn’t. That’s just me, though. But reading, “You don’t call in nine-ball,” had me through the roof. Those two guys playing? I felt like they were tricksters, like they meant something other than what they were saying, and I’m pretty sure Doe shows up here, thick black eyeliner and all. Remember that chapter in The Only Good Indians that switches everything up? That 40% mark where you think it’s second person but it’s really dramatic monologue? Hindsight is that chapter here, and man, it’s all high speed and sixth gear and no looking back from there. That sixth gear, alternately down-shifting with humor, POV switch (does that deftly mid-chapter sometimes), the subjunctive, and dipping into character development, it’s totally SGJ territory, and nobody does it better. He puts you in that RV. You have to look.
We pick up another passenger: The Road King; quick nod to Jason and the Argonauts. And little by little, the dominos start falling. I’m skirting spoilers here, so I’ll just say: this is the best set of characters I’ve encountered in a while. The big bad, it’s all of them, sure, but it’s also none of them. Each one is a hero in their own eyes, totally gray territory, and they’re so tragic at times. From Nate’s perspective: “It was like everything was working against him: a cat-lady with an ice pick for a magic wand, a driver who dressed like a priest but couldn’t preach, and a cousin who thought she was a weasel.” And in true dramatic fashion, they all either slowly make their way off the stage, or are ruthlessly pushed. Another great line here: “It was probably in a wagon someone else was dragging, so it would always be ahead of him. Maybe that’s all death was: people pulling things with them, unable to ever let them go.”
Off the Reservation is a bonfire some kid and his grandmother built to pull a lost hunter in, a lit cigarette set horizontally in your hand, passed over to a friend you’d do anything for. It’s two thumbs up, way up, higher than a flagpole standing on a pile of bones. It’ll rip your chest open, superglue it back together, rip it open again, then suture you up with boot laces. And that bullet thing at the end? Chef’s kiss, man. “Sturrrrgis!”
An ex-detective turned addict after his daughter vanishes is caught between being indebted to a biker-gang leader and finding the truth behind the leader’s ritualistically dismembered son. And there’s a very pissed off crone out there somewhere, picking off people one by one.
The cold-open here hooks you pretty quick. Rosson does a great job with setting and atmosphere, a dark, cold, and dreary Oregon town that feels bleached and salty and left behind by the rest of the world. The POV juggling works too, never shaking you out of a mostly linear narrative. There are some jumps in time/flashbacks, but Rosson aptly orientates the reader, and the backstory payoffs are earned.
The twenty to thirty percent mark is a bit weedy, but after that, the gas pedal’s to the floor and it’s all downhill, with a few stops for plot clarity and setup. All worth it.
At first glance, meaning the cover and description, Crone seems like a horror story—witches or monsters—and it is, but mostly it’s a grimy crime story (think Sons of Anarchy, maybe) where the real monsters are people. Rosson puts his characters through the meat grinder, and those kids never had a chance. The action is fast and painful, no long build ups or witty banter or slow motion moments, just bang! and it’s over and you’re shocked.
If you’re looking for a few hundred pages of monster action, this one probably isn’t for you. The monster is there, sure (the story wouldn’t work if you removed it), but it’s not really the centerpiece of the story. I’ll say it again: man, those kids never had a chance. Rosson makes some interesting choices along the way: an interlude that feels like something out of the film Weapons, a kind of SOC near the last few chapters (which I dug), and an epilogue that turns a grim and possibly non-redemptive ending into something hopeful. Icing, bells, and whistles aside, at the core of Crone is a deep-seated fear of being a horrible parent. I totally recommend this one, and look forward to Rosson’s next book.
Spanning one hundred years of history, Mazywood is so many things: a monster story, a historical family saga, and a contemporary isolation/survival horror tale, all wrapped up around you like a fur coat in winter. Told in six parts with alternating timelines and points of view (this is accomplished seamlessly), we begin with seven-year-old Mazelle Washington in Gracetown. Really, we begin with a wish made in a muddy pond in the woods, because ‘Mazelle Washington worshipped the woods.’
She wishes for a best friend, forever, and that wish will both bless and curse her and her family for generations to come. Because ‘wishes always try to trick you.’ Details and spoilers aside, what Mazelle gets is a dog named Scout, and they become like ‘two pack animals with a special bond.’ What Mazelle also gets is a Hollywood role in Li’l Gumshoes, playing a character she despises, a ridiculous caricature who, much like the wish she made as a child, will haunt her, her career as an actress, and her family for the next one hundred years. The weight of the Washington’s financial well-being is placed on her shoulders, essentially parentifying her, locking her into scammy contracts (where she can be traded back and forth between studios) and a role wrought with systemic racism and ritualistic humiliation prevalent of both the era and modern day Hollywood. Not to mention having to live with Aunt Ruby…
Flash forward to the present day, L.A.: Johnny Washington has had some success in Hollywood as a screenwriter, but his current project is stalling out due to some white executive bullshit, and Tasha, his wife, is pregnant. The problem with that is, Johnny and Tasha have two children already, Sharise and Imani, and they’re getting ‘older,’ looking forward to enjoying their lives post-parenthood (not that that ever ends, anyway). Long story short, the Washington family packs into a RAV4 rental and heads to Mount Shasta, where Johnny’s grandmother—Mazelle, of course—owned a place named Bear Creek Lodge… a place Johnny vowed never to return to.
Secrets can do a lot of damage, and Bear Creek Lodge is full of them. Johnny Washington is full of them, too. We find out that Uncle Ricky went into the woods and never came back. If only he’d spilled the beans earlier. Tasha, who looks a lot like Johnny’s grandmother, wants to write a book about Mazelle, Johnny would rather forget her, and Sharise and Imani just want to go snowboarding. The girls find a deer head and a freezer full of fifty-year-old meat, Johnny confronts his trauma and ‘the punishment room,’ Tasha has strange dreams and really likes that fur coat, and when the power goes out, something big and fast starts to move in the snow around their cabin, making its way inside. Now, as a Southern Californian who recently moved into a cabin in the middle of nowhere—near Mount Shasta, I might add—where the snow is a nightmare, this part of the story hit hard. But at least I didn’t find a strange Jeep parked outside, and a body part underneath it. Johnny gets knocked out, Tasha goes missing, and it’s up to Sharise and Imani to save the day.
We get another part showing the progression/regression of Mazelle’s career, the celebrities she meets, the slimy character of Jerry Lorenzo, and how she begins to dissociate from the horrible things happening to her, the husband who beats her, the children she didn’t want, the aging of her parents, and how: ‘more and more, Mazelle felt the urge to hurt someone.’ Eventually, she makes her way back to the ‘Wishing Pool’. And this time ‘it wasn’t a wish, but a negotiation.’ Once we get to chapter 30, the truth starts to unravel, and man, it’s bone-chilling! There’s a chapter, 36 I think, that will totally shred your heart, ruin you, and change your mind about Mazelle as she ages. ‘She understood how the temporary madness unleashed by the world receded under Death’s gaze.’ Note here* Don’t ever forget to tell the people you love that you love them. It could be your last words.
Can’t say much about the last five chapters but they’re awesome, and Due certainly lands the ending, a drive back home that’s both hopeful and terrifying. While all the characters are well-realized, I have to say, Johnny and Sharise pissed me off for most of the story—just stuck in neutral and frozen in thought, but not everyone can be a hero. Favorite characters: Mazelle, Imani (the real hero), and Uncle Ricky. Would love a story with Imani and Uncle Ricky. To sum it up: one of the best novels I’ve read in a while.
I Know A Place is a short story version of “Nevermind,” put together—sequenced—like an album you know is going to make some waves. ‘Oh yeah, that’s the one that started it all,’ they’ll say. Not that Nat Cassidy is new to this, but there’s a feverish freedom running through the veins of this collection that I haven’t seen/felt from his writing before. Assigning stars to art doesn’t do much in the way of recommending something, so here’s a quick breakdown of what you’ll experience when you drop the needle on this one.
Rest Stop: A surreal locked-in-a-gas-station-bathroom yarn about a musician pining for his buddy’s girl. It’s a cat and mouse slasher-type story where Cassidy gets you to care about a somewhat unlikeable character. The chunkiest of the thirteen stories included, it starts out as a pretty cut and dry ‘ordinary dude in extraordinary circumstances’ story, but then something strange happens about half-way through: it gets better and better and better, and layers of meaning and theme and identity start to snowball into a total existential crisis where you’re wrestling with God. But then again, it could just be a story about a rest stop. Killer way to open this collection.
Meet-Cute #1: The Unluckiest Girl: An atmospheric, slow stab in the gut, with three red flags: a date, a name, and a geographic location. One of those ‘Ah-ha!—Oh no!’ kind of stories.
Generation: A gynecologist who loves her booze, rehashing the kinds of arguments—spoken and unspoken—she hears from patients awaiting their bundles of joy…or pain…or tentacles? No hand holding here, you’re dropped in the deep end of the gene pool. I liked the ambiguity at the end, the long exhale. Forces the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Nice: An overworked elf, a kid obsessed with Santa Claus, and a whole lot of blood. If Meet-Cute #1 is a slow stab in the gut, Nice is a flurry of slashes and nasty laughs in your face. With tinsel and cookies, of course.
The Art of What You Want: A businessman/doctor confessional about a dude who keeps seeing/hearing his dead wife. No collection is complete without a good ole’ ‘stabbed in the back revenge’ story, and this one mostly satisfies, using flashbacks that, surprisingly, don’t weigh down the story’s velocity. That ending, though?
The Lunar Eclipse: A haunting ‘Then and Now’ story about returns, survival, and innocence lost. This is where the collection starts to sing, to riff off of form and style and time and place, leaving you kinda breathless after those last lines. For the life of me, I can’t explain why I liked this story so much, but that’s what good fiction does, right? One of the best stories here.
Laughlines: Missy’s off to Merrie Olde England to discover her roots. An estranged dad, a labyrinthian castle staffed by people who find everything a little too funny, horrific tapestries, and a deranged Lord who haunts the halls makes this email-formatted (epistolary?) story the most humorous and conversational of the lot. No matter what direction you think Laughlines is going in, the ending will have you laughing out loud.
Run for Your Life: 11/22/63 meets “We Sold Our Souls” for Rock N’ Roll in this poignant time-travel tale of a lonely self-proclaimed musical genius who goes full-on murdering mogul to hold on to what ultimately never belonged to him in the first place. Now, I’m more of a Stones person (Jagger), but even if you don’t know much about the Beatles, this story will still hit you in the feels. If you love music, all the better. Easily one of the best stories here, especially if you struggle with imposter syndrome. No one else can tell the story (make the music) that you can, the way you can. You might need fingers for that, though.
Jubilee Juncture: Cassidy does a lot with a small space here. For some reason this story reminded me of that movie “Death to Smoochy,” but I digress. There’s a dude who runs a Christian children’s TV show, a puppeteer who may’ve just been banned from the show, and a four-foot tall dummy sitting in a dark corner. Then, there’s a wet sfflllppttt. This one’s dungeon-level dark.
Come: There’s a sex video—teacher/student in the science room—being passed around Paradise Valley High. The student in that video is dead now, as are a bunch of students who watched it. Raging hormones + watching a possibly cursed sex video = a swath of dead teenagers. But our POV character, despite watching the video herself, is still alive. What gives? Loved the ending of this one (total title-card moment). Reminded me a bit of “It Follows.”
Into the Life of Things: Two detectives are on the scene of a women who died on a stairwell below a skylight in a mental health facility. This one reminds me of “Lunar Eclipse,” not the story or style but the way it makes you feel. A ‘married’ couple join a yoga retreat and are forced to communicate using white boards (the format works wonders) during certain times of day/night, only that ‘silent’ communication becomes something akin to the empty space surrounding the branches of a tree. Honestly, I was rooting for Joshua the entire story. The ending leaves you twisting in the wind a bit, but all you have to do is ‘focus.’
Meet-Cute #2: The Scariest Thing: There’s a lot of humanity in all of these stories, but I think this one shines in that category. I was expecting a quick stab like the first ‘Meet-Cute’ but was both pleasantly surprised and left with a sense of sadness. Man, this story is all about confession, and honesty, and coming to terms with what you can and can’t change, and the horror of either accepting reality or fantasy, and you’re left with a silhouette, two hands, fearless as long as they hold on to each other. There’s the exit door, there’s the hand, make a choice. The scariest thing, for sure. *There’s a great line here: “…for every moment you manage to survive in this world, you’re worthy of myth.”
A Fruiting Body: If E.E. Cummings wrote a cosmic joke that was adapted into a stage play and you participated in a table read of it, you’d get ‘A Fruiting Body.’ I read it alone, picked up on the rhythm of it, and was totally exhilarated by the knock knock ending. All roller coaster ride, all feeling, totally perfect way to end this album. Might be my favorite story here.
Not only are collections a tough sell these days, they’re really hard to put together in a cohesive but fluctuating, satisfying, sing-song way like Cassidy’s done here. So much more to say about ‘I Know A Place,’ but go find out for yourself. Every story here is worth it.
Time to explain, or choose the miracle. I choose the miracle.
Think I’ve read three novels by Kraus: Scowler, Rotters, and Whalefall; enjoyed them all. I started Angel Down but it completely fried my brain (I’ll pick it up again one day). Although Whalefall is brilliant, I think The Sixth Nik is my favorite. Assigning stars to art is pretty meaningless, as is rehashing jacket copy and synopsis, so I’ll hit the meat and potatoes here, maybe the way it made me feel.
The Sixth Nik is a brutal journey of self-discovery, that self being a nine-year-old who isn’t built the way most nine-year-olds are. It’s science fiction, sure, and horror and fantasy and a bunch of other shelves to fit on, and yeah, it’s akin to ‘Alien’ and maybe ‘Murderbot’ but so much more. The prose is absolutely insane! I mean, even if there were no characters and no plot I probably would have read the whole thing. I got tired of writing amazing lines in my notebook. Here are a few. ‘Smart fiber optics hanging from hooks like horse whips.’ ‘The cabin’s other socket gazed out into an ebony outer space enlivened by the colorful cauliflower of a distant nebula.’ ‘I looked and felt like a Murder but moved like an eleven-year-old fresh off a clumsy abortion.’ I had to read this in ten percent bursts because the prose just had me smiling, was kinda overwhelming in some spots. And Kraus doesn’t let up, not sure how he keeps up that level of writing for so long.
The world building was really easy to absorb and visualize because I got the feeling that the story took place in the not so distant future, like it might actually exist someday, and most of the backstory was based on historical events, didn’t feel far-fetched or too abstract. The biological terms are solid, and I’m pretty sure Kraus had fun creating/combining systems for the descriptions of The Sickness. It’s a tumorous ship with a killer placenta—I mean, doesn’t get better than that. The use of color and texture and taste in the descriptions was deft as hell, some so spot-on that you just laugh about it.
Arzan, Feng, Jayne, Murder 005, Roy, Pug the Rust Man, Tuma, Talfa and Joe, all unique and rendered with a depth that slowly chips away at Sisilla’s snail shell. The Iron Sea sections were awesome: you ever flipped your bike to put that greasy chain back on its sprocket? That’s what it’s like. The Nik Six was a great way to explore the characters through Sisilla’s perspective, a great set of questions to ask yourself, really, and they resurface at a crucial point in the story.
There’s a chapter where the crew of The Sickness port in to a kind of internet analogue called the Snarl, formatted in these strange wavy columns of text, that will totally suck you into the experience.
Don’t get me wrong, none of this story is sunshine and rainbows. It’s super brutal, visceral, and horrific, and there were times when I said to myself, ‘Man, is this girl ever gonna catch a break?’ As soon as she starts to catch her breath, BAM! Another one bites the dust. Back into the meat grinder. Truth hurts, though, and kids go through hell, and sometimes found family and good memories, real or not, are the only things that get you through. The ending was apt, wonderful, artful, even, and I feel like Sisilla GA! was always going to end up GA! closest to what made her GA! feel like she was home GA!
Quote: ‘As a result, it is arguable that it does not matter if the niks work at all. The story of the niks works, and it seems like that is all the world requires.’
Big thanks to Netgalley, Saga Press, and Daniel Kraus for the opportunity to experience this.
We recently had a power outage up here in the woods that lasted roughly seven days, mostly due to downed trees. Creative ways to boil water, store food (packed it in snow outside), and keep ourselves busy and productive ensued. Real quick: Trivial Pursuit (some kind of ‘genius’ edition) has the most ridiculous questions imaginable; my knowledge of geography turns out to be subpar at best. Suffice it to say, we agreed that the one thing we really missed during that period with no power was hearing music. When that magical moment of power restoration hit, man did we celebrate, throwing headphones on and smiling and rocking out the rest of the day–then the TV inevitably came to life.
I can write without music, no problem, but it’s kinda like taking a really long road trip in silence, windows up. About seven years ago I recognized how my brain works a bit like that guy Pavlov’s dog did (dog’s dead, by the way): ring a bell and get a treat. The bell’s a song; the treat’s a voice, or the angle for a voice to pry it’s way in, that is. So every project has a playlist now, consisting of maybe twenty songs, something like that, running 3-4 minutes a piece. Doing the math, that’s roughly 60-80 minutes. Now, I can’t write productively for that duration of time, or I can but it’ll all end up in the chipper when the door’s open for editing. 15-20 minute bursts is about where I sit now, just about enough time for a single song to repeat 3-4 times, get up and interact with the world, then hit the page again. It’s more about a time count than a word count, I guess’s what I’m saying.
My mom used to take me to the movies all the time, it was just a thing we did together, and right after the credits began to roll (no cut scenes post credits back then) we’d hit Music Plus and pick up the soundtrack to whatever we watched, if it was good. Association of story with music solidified. Really, it’s a time machine that works if you listen hard enough. Here’s the playlist I used to write SLAP (s’what we’ve been calling Scream Like a Prayer since the get). I realize not everyone uses apple music. If you do, here’s the link. If not, well, here’s the analog version (I don’t do Spotify). Each song’s a chapter title, with a few omitted on the chopping block. *That cover’s an old polaroid of me screaming in my grandma’s bathroom.
