Another Rock and Shock has passed, and this was certainly my best one for sales yet. I moved both hardcover and paperback copies of Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, multiple issues of Dead Reckonings, and my lone copy of Writers Workshop of Horror.

I manned the New England Horror Writers' table on and off all three days, alongside comics creators T.J. May and Bob Heske, and fellow fiction writers Paul Tremblay, Paul McMahon, Seamus Cooper (whose novel, The Mall of Cthulhu, sold well and is available from Night Shade Books and fine bookstores everywhere), LL Soares, Jennifer Palmatier, Morven Westfield, and many more. The booth was right next to artist Ken Kelly--painter of iconic album covers such as Destroyer and Love Gun from KISS and loads of great Conan and comics arts--and behind us through the curtain was the celebrity room where Jack Ketchum had his own booth next to Malcolm McDowell and Tiffany Shepis.

The highlight of my weekend, however, was spending about 15-20 minutes talking about Into the Night with John Landis. It's one of his own favorites, but virtually no one brings it up at conventions to him. I know the film inside and out, since I wore my VHS tape of it out back in high school (and not just for Michelle Pfeiffer's only nude scene, either). I had a much shorter chat with McDowell about his playing Reggie Wanker in Get Crazy (another high school fave) and Jimmy Porter in the BBC production of Look Back in Anger (sadly, neither of them are available on DVD).

And speaking of DVDs, I did end up buying a few from a table that had used discs for $5 a pop. Here's the lineup:

The Burrowers (directed by JT Petty, and starring William Mapother and Clancy Brown)

One Eyed Monster, a horror comedy featuring Amber Benson and...Ron Jeremy!?

Rampo Noir (out of print in the US already), an anthology film from Japan adapting four stories by Edogawa Rampo

Dorm, the much-touted Thai horror film

Gemini, a film from Shinya Tsukamoto of Tetuso: Iron Man fame

Kirei, another Japanese horror film that just looks deeply disturbing

Arang, a South Korean supernatural/procedural

The horror! Good fun overall, though I'm thoroughly exhausted.

If any of you are in the Worcester area this weekend, stop in at Rock and Shock, a festival of horror films and heavy metal. The horror movie- and book-related events are held at the DCU Center, and the music is at The Palladium (formerly E.M. Loew's). There's a pretty impressive guest list this year, including Malcolm McDowell, John Landis, Doug Jones, and Margot Kidder, as well as a ton of cult/horror figures like Sid Haig, P.J. Soles, Bill Mosely, Kane Hodder, and the like. Check the guest page at the website for a full list.

I'll be manning the New England Horror Writers' table alongside folks like Paul Tremblay, Brendan Halpin, Don D'Ammassa, Kurt Newton, and many more. Also at the table will be some pretty snazzy comics writers and illustrators like Tom Moran and Bob Heske.

The con's major author guest is Jack Ketchum, who will be selling and signing all weekend. He's also doing a guest lecture spot for my Gothic Literature course, but you can't come to that. You can, however, pick up Offspring, based on Ketchum's novel of the same name, which came out just last week. That makes the fourth film adaptation from Ketchum's novels. The trailer is creepy as hell, and I'm looking forward to seeing the full film.




We'll all have books for sale--I've got copies of Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Writers Workshop of Horror, and Dead Reckonings, and there may even be a couple stray copies of Jack Haringa Must Die hiding in the wings.

nick_kaufmann 's State of the Genre column from Fear Zone has gone through some changes, including in name and in venue. He can now be found writing the Dead Air column at the Internet Review of Science Fiction. The first column is up now, and Nick spent some time asking me questions like I know something. Apparently I went on at such length that he's getting two articles out of it! The first one is live at IROSF under the excellent title "At the Mountains of Misperception."

Check it out!

This is brilliant:

There's a lovely bite in the air this morning, and since we went apple picking last week, we decided to make apple crisp. I love the weather that a New England autumn brings, and the apples only get better as the season progresses.

Apple Crisp Recipe

6 lbs. crisp, ripe apples (Empire, Cortland, and Cornell top my list for crisp), peeled and sliced
1 cup raisins
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly butter or oil a 9" X 13" X 2"pan (if non-stick, don't butter)

In a small sauce pan mix maple syrup, water, and raisins. Bring to a gentle boil, then simmer until softened. Drain.

Place peeled, sliced apples in a large mixing bowl. Mix in drained raisins.

In a small bowl, combine sugar, flour, and spices. Sprinkle over apple-raisin mix and stir gently but thoroughly until fruit is covered. Place in baking pan and pat down firmly.

Topping:

1+1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut into chunks
1 cup rolled oats (quick cooking, not instant)
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. nutmeg

With a pastry blender or hands, mix together topping ingredients in a medium bowl. Be sure to break up the butter in the mix until the topping becomes a crumbly pie crust consistency. Cover apples with mixture and pat down lightly.

Bake 1 hour, until top is light brown and firm. (Baking time depends on apples.) Serve warm, topped with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Makes 8-10 large servings.

After a fairly substantial absence from the Shocklines message board, I got sucked into a conversation regarding sexism in horror and making reference to an article on  that British Fantasy Society collection of interviews that contains no conversations with women. You'd think I'd know better by now than to argue on the internet--and really, what am I doing on that message board anyway?--but there it is. I'm most impressed (and by impressed I mean mildly horrified) by the intellectual and rhetorical contortions made in the process of constructing straw man arguments that are expected, miraculously, to address the actual points made. For those who don't want to fish, here's what I said:

And in reply to someone asking why I continue to support the horror genre if its so sexist (which of course isn't what I claimed):
The final post (as of now) in the thread is the work of the most talented contortionist:


I suppose someone should point out that the BFS has actually admitted the problem with the book and used the word sexism in said apology.

Forgot that it is also my old pal Brian Keene's birthday today. Go visit his official website to find out what's new with him. He did just return from Las Vegas, where he was a guest of honor at KillerCon.

And for the record, Brian was the first author to kill me off in a novel (and in a short story, come to think of it). So Jack Haringa Must Die is really all his fault. But then, what isn't Brian Keene's fault?

...to have a happy 52nd birthday! Nick Cave was born this day in 1957.

And while I haven't read it yet, he has a new novel out called The Death of Bunny Munro , the American cover for which is much less interesting than the Australian and UK covers.



But if the book is half as good as ...And the Ass Saw the Angel (which sadly seems to be out of print), it will be magnificent.

So here's one of my favorite Nick Cave videos (with Kylie Minogue), which you can listen to as you open a new tab and shop for Nick Cave stuff (the Amazon page for Bunny has a video interview with NC):

"The danger for all novels and novelists, he said, is that there may be no audience left as time passes.

"'I don't think there's a decline of the novel so much as the decline of the readership,' Mr. Roth said, mounting what he admitted was a favorite hobbyhorse. 'There's been a drastic decline, even a disappearance, of a serious readership. That's inescapable. We can't fail to see it. It's also inescapable, given the pressures in the society. That's a tragedy. By readers, I don't mean people who pick up a book, once in a while. By readers, I mean people who when they are at work during the day think that after dinner tonight and after the kids are in bed, I'm going to read for two hours. That's what I mean. No. 2, these people do it three or four nights a week for two and half, three hours, and while they do it they don't watch television or answer the phone.'

"'So if that's what readers are, how many of them are there? We are down to a gulag archipelago of readers. Of the sort of readers I've described, there are 176 of them in Nashville, 432 in Atlanta, 4,011 in Chicago, 3,017 in Los Angeles and 7,000 in New York. It adds up to 60,000 people. I assure you there are no more. We would be foolish to add a zero. Maybe there are 120,000. But that's it, and that is bizarre.' 

"Whether it is a matter of television, mass culture or shifts in the way people work and live, Mr. Roth said, 'There is a change in the mental landscape having to do with concentration,' and that is what's responsible for the declining readership.'

"'For me, concentration is a pleasure, but it's no longer thought of that way by most people,' he said.

"The number of serious readers may halve every decade, Mr. Roth said, leading to the obvious. And yet, he said, he writes every day at his home in northwestern Connecticut, believing in the existence of the serious reader. 

"'It's what I have instead of religion," he said. "Some people believe in God, and I believe in the reader. But I don't want my faith tested too strongly.'"

--Philip Roth interviewed in The Times. In 1993.

Happy birthday to charlesatan (Charles Tan)! His tireless compilations of great articles, interviews, and blog posts about reading and writing specfic are a highlight to my every perusal of my friends' list. And his interviews with the Shirley Jackson Award nominees shouldn't be missed.

Does anyone else out there remember the great Boston band Cliffs of Dooneen? Lucius Shepard's recent post about bands that should have made it big got me rooting around on YouTube, but I could only find one video from the group, and it's not by any stretch my favorite song. I guess "Carol" got some decent radio play even outside the Boston area, but their whole first album, The Dog Went East & God Went West, kicks all kinds of ass. I saw them three or four times around the city before they split up.

Any other Cliffs fans out there?

I'm mostly on Josh Olson's side after reading this article from the Village Voice Online, though what's supposed to be snappy, hip rhetoric at the start I found mostly a turn off in the way I found almost all the dialogue in Superbad a turn off. Still, the guy's not dumb, and he makes a number of good points in the progress of his argument. One favorite bit:

"It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

"(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)"

Forced to read! Oh, the agony.

My so-called summer vacation is at an end, as we start pre-sessional meetings tomorrow morning. I've been teaching in our new program for international students for the past two weeks already, though, and much of my summer has been consumed with preparatory work for this year's classes. In addition to my staple AP class, I'm teaching three new elective courses this year--of my design, so it's all my fault--which means reading or re-reading a pile of books I haven't taught before. Here's a list of books I'm leading students through that are fresh to the curriculum:

Summer Reading

lost boy, lost girl by Peter Straub 
Duma Key by Stephen King

The Gothic Strain (elective course)

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa
The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell

Death and the City (elective course on detective fiction and urban studies)

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Crazy Kill by Chester Himes
The Longman Anthology of Detective Fiction, ed. Deane Mansfield-Kelley and Lois A. Marchino

Central and South Asian Literature

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Poems of Rumi
The Prose Ramayana
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction, ed. Denys Johnson-Davies

AP Literature

Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter

I haven't finished reading this list, but I've made a significant dent in it. I try to stay at least a trimester ahead of my prepping duties, though I've jumped around a bit to gie my reading some variety. The chair of our department is a real task master, though, so I've been forced--forced, I tell you--to read my widdle eyes out.

Additionally, I've read several books for review in the next issue of Dead Reckonings (also available at the Horror Mall), including Peter Straub's The Skylark (from Subterranean Press) and the sold-out novella A Special Place: The Heart of A Dark Matter (Borderlands Press). I'll be interested to read the heavily edited A Dark Matter, the mass-market version of The Skylark due from Doubleday in February of 2010. Then there was Bad Things by Michael Marshall, which--despite the marketing--is a real, live supernatural horror novel, and John Langan's debut novel, The House of Windows, which fences its yard in the best traditions of haunted house books but grows something strange, original, and contemporary in its gardens (there's a tortured metaphor for you).

And if you don't get the reference in the title of this entry, it's from a bit by the great comedian Bill Hicks. Here's a clip of the performance:

...about a man before. But Hal Duncan's incredible response to John C. Wright's awful bigotry made me a little weak in the knees. Well done, Mr. Duncan.

http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2009/08/open-letter-to-john-c-wright.html

Last month at Readercon I picked up a copy of The Road Through the Wall, a Shirley Jackson book of which I had never heard. It turns out this is her 1948 first novel, re-released in paperback in 1976 to capitalize on the success of "The Lottery" and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by giving it a cover with creepy children illustrations and copy claiming it "a macabre masterpiece." It's a slim novel of 220 pages in reasonably-sized type, and I'm looking forward to it. However, the descriptions I've read online make it clear that the back cover copy calling the book "Shirley Jackson's unforgettable novel of mounting terror and shattering revelation" may be more than a tad misleading.

Can't find a cover scan for the paperback, or I'd show it to you.

I always thought Hangsaman (which I also haven't read) was her first novel. Has anyone out there read this one? What did you think?


Also, Googling the book brought me to a review that "previously appeared in the Bonner County Bee..." and other places, which contains a good example of the dangling participle. I'll have to remember to use this in class: "Despite being a first novel, Jackson has made an artful statement out of her grim teen years."

can in fact be used for accurate literary analysis.



There's actually some sort of rule or law or fallacy about this, but I can't remember the name. It has to do with "alien" or fantasy names for rabbits. Can anyone remind me?

Scariest development award goes to: Forget H1N1 Flu, and start thinking drug-resistant malaria! Back to the gin and tonics, Jeeves.

Today's local news hyperbole award goes to ABC-TV 13, WTVG in Toledo, OH for "Tanning beds as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas." Be sure to stay upwind of your local Tanfabulous.

Crappiest beat + best quote condolence award given to Jim Farber of the Daily News for covering teen pop from shrill corporate marionettes like Demi Lovato and Ashley Tisdale. But he did come up with the phrase "training-bra feminism" to make the article worthwhile.

Topping contenders in the "Duh!" award category is CNN's report on a new bill proposing a national ban on texting while driving. It's sad that we live in a country where people are so self-absorbed and flat-out stupid that such a law is necessary. However, CNN's lede stating "a study found that drivers who text while on the road are much more likely to have an accident than undistracted drivers" seems both vague and self-evident context for the bill. If they had to stick with the study, an actual statistic--quoted later--would have been a much better hook: "truck drivers who texted while driving were 23 times more likely to crash or get into a near-accident than undistracted drivers."

Good news of the day: Barnes & Noble stores are going to start offering free Wi-Fi! With any luck, Starbucks will be close behind--many McDonald's already do, especially if they have a "McCafe"--and the exorbitant demands of the T-Mobile Hotspot will go away.

Best headline of the day: Hooker Named Lay Person of the Year. Really, Bowie County Citizens Tribune/DeKalb News? Really?

Because I am going to the beach today, I am filled with love for the world. And so I will share my recipe for Strawberry-Blueberry Pie.

Double-crust recipe of your choice for 9-inch, deep pie dish (preferably glass)

3 cups strawberries, hulled and quartered
2 cups blueberries
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsps flour
1 Tbsps cornstarch
juice of 1/2 lime or lemon
1 Tbsp butter for dotting
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 egg yolk, stirred

Preheat oven to 425

Place unbaked bottom crust in pie dish and press to sides.

In a large mixing bowl, gently stir together strawberries, blueberries, juice, and sugar. Sprinkle flour and cornstarch over fruit mixture and stir lightly. Scoop mixture into pie dish, mounding slightly toward center. Sprinkle nutmeg and cinnamon across top. Dot with butter, then lay top crust over fruit, folding under and fluting edges of crust.

Brush top crust with egg yolk. Cut vent holes in design of choice. Sprinkle top crust with granulated sugar.

Bake 20 minutes at 425. Remove from oven and place pie ring/tinfoil around crust edge to prevent burning. Lower oven to 350 and bake additional 25-30 minutes, until filling is bubbling and crust is golden brown.

Cool one hour minimum before serving. Best topped with vanilla ice cream.

Note: this is a very juicy pie. It's recommended you have a pan on a lower rack, or a pie ring under the dish to catch spilling juices.

Enjoy!

I'll be at Readercon 20 in Burlington, MA, all day today and about the first half of tomorrow. This was a last-minute decision, so I didn't put in for any programming this year. If the scheduling gods don't mess with me three years in a row, I hope to attend the whole con and serve on a panel or two next year. But this time around, I'm hoping to catch up with folks I haven't seen in a year or more, including Laird Barron, Ellen Datlow, Jeff Ford, Peter Straub, and Gary Wolfe. I'm looking forward to meeting Stephen Graham Jones for the first time; his novel Demon Theory just blew me away.

It looks like a terrific line-up of panels and guests, with many former GoHs in attendance. This year's Guests of Honor are Elizabeth Hand and Greer Gilman, and the Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday in the late morning. I really wish I could be there for the ceremony, but that just couldn't be worked out this year.

Stop on by if you can.