It’s been a while since my last blog post. Busy times, but normally busy. Nothing out of the ordinary. Writing, taxes, reading, etc. We’ve seen the temperature go up and down and up and down. The plants and animals must surely be confused. Our azalea bush (pictured above) is in full flower, and there’s enough oak pollen all over the place that every road looks like the yellow brick road.
One exciting (for me, at least!) development since last time is the fact that I have been invited to attend Northern FanCon in Prince George, BC at the beginning of May. They even released a nifty graphic to promote my appearance.
I’ve only been to British Columbia once before, and that was only for part of a day, so I’m looking forward to this trip, brief and all as it will be. I haven’t even been to Canada in a good many years, so I’m looking forward to getting back to the home and native land. Tim Hortons, look out!
Among the other special guests at the con: Alan Tudyk (Firefly), Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica), and Amy Acker. Should be cool few days. I’ll report more once I know more.
I was also a guest on the 100th episode of the Stephen King Podcast a week or so ago discussing all the things related to King that we’ll be seeing in 2019.
Brian Keene has announced a couple of times in the past two weeks that he’s working on the final draft of the novella that will be part of our two-novella book, something we’ve been working on off and on for the past, oh, forever. We hope to have news for you about that project quite soon.
My first published short story, “Harming Obsession,” will appear in The Best of Cemetery Dance 2, an enormous compilation of fiction containing works from Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, Michael Marshall Smith, Ray Garton, Jack Ketchum, Douglas Clegg, Poppy Z. Brite, Joe R. Lansdale, Nancy A. Collins, Peter Crowther, Norman Partridge, Ed Gorman, William F. Nolan, F. Paul Wilson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Simon Clark, Richard Christian Matheson, David J. Schow, Stewart O’Nan, Glen Hirshberg, Ramsey Campbell, and many more.
My story “The Dungarvon Whooper,” inspired by a New Brunswick legend, appears in Nothing’s Sacred Volume 5, April 2019, with a moody illustration from Francois Vaillancourt, who did the cover art for Flight or Fright.
My story “The Invisible Man” will appear in the anthology A Time for Violence, edited by Andy Rausch and Chris Roy for Near to the Knuckle Press. Other contributors include Richard Chizmar, Max Allan Collins, Stewart O’Nan, Tyson Blue, Steve Spignesi and Joe Lansdale, with an introduction by Stan Wiater. It launches on May 1.
We’re up to an even dozen translation of Flight or Fright in the works. Happy to hear that Joe Hill’s story “You Are Released” will appear in The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven and it has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. The trade paperback edition from Scribner will be available on June 4.
I’ve only had time to write one book review so far this year, this one for Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, but I hope to be doing a few more shortly. I’m currently reading Inspection by Josh Malerman and just finished Uncommon Type, a collection of short stories (all of them featuring a typewriter at some point) by Tom Hanks. I quite enjoyed them.
We watched Mary Poppins Returns the other night, which was delightful. We especially liked Angela Lansbury’s cameo toward the end. I saw Us on the weekend. Other than the somewhat wonky explanation for the existence of the “tethered,” I really enjoyed it, and it gave me a lot to think about afterwards. The performances of the four primaries were amazing and impressive. The previous weekend I saw Captain Marvel, which was also quite good, but less inclined to cause a great deal of post-movie reflection. I loved the interplay between Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson. I also saw Velvet Buzzsaw on Netflix a while back, and that movie is totally bonkers but a boatload of fun.
I’ve been watching a lot of foreign crime series on Netflix and elsewhere of late. Two Finnish series (Deadwind and season 2 of Bordertown) and season 2 of the Flemmish series La Trêve (The Break). Bordertown features a quirky cop and The Break features one who thinks he’s talking to dead people. I zoomed through Russian Doll on Netflix and Homecoming on Amazon Prime. There is definitely a place in the world for 30-minute suspense series, in addition to 30-minute comedies, of which After Life and The Kominsky Method are decent examples. Tin Star on Amazon is a good follow-up to Banshee for over-the-top violent rural-ish crime series, this one starring Tim Roth. My latest discovery is Babylon Berlin, a German crime series set in Berlin in 1929. It’s gorgeous, lavish, decadent and intriguing, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next. The main character has PTSD from World War I, and he self-medicates with vials of morphine as he works for the vice squad in Berlin at a time when all sorts of political and philosophical forces are struggling for power and recognition.
