We were starting to think the clouds had forgotten how to throw water from the sky. My wife and I were having supper at one of the handful of local restaurants we frequent (we only go to places that have outdoor seating) when the skies opened up and pelted the earth for quite a while. It was a good soaking. We had to move from our table at the edge of the covered patio to keep from getting splashed, but otherwise we enjoyed the storm—especially the drop in temperature it brought.
Because it has been aitch-oh-tee HOT lately. Well over a hundred degrees every day for about three weeks, with “feels like” temps around 110°. Too hot to do much of anything but stay inside. It’s a momentary reprieve—after today we’re heading back to triple digits again. And August is usually our hot month. The Gulf of Mexico is probably as warm as a sauna, which means any storms that end up there will get stronger fast. Could be an interesting summer.
Less than two months until the release of my book Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life and Influences. On publication day, I will be appearing at the relatively new independent bookstore in our community, Village Books. While the event is free, seating is limited, so reservations are required. For people unable to attend, the bookstore is happy to ship signed/inscribed copies via this link. The link will remain active after the event—if someone orders a signed copy, I’ll drop by the store to spill some ink on the book.
A while back, Brian Freeman asked me if I thought there was an essay to be written about Stephen King books that had different original titles. I agreed that there might be enough there to write about. The result is a lovely chapbook called What’s In A Name? What makes this chapbook particularly special (in addition to the fact that is limited to members of his Lividian Publications patreon) is the fact that he got François Vaillancourt to create book covers for these discarded titles, making a gorgeous little booklet. Although it is out of print on publication, François has created a poster featuring his alternate covers. To learn more about that, see his Facebook post from July 14, 2022.
This is proving to be a productive year for short stories. Here are my recent and forthcoming publications:
- Double Play, Summer Bludgeon: An Unsettling Reads Anthology, June 21, 2022
- Kane’s Alibi, The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, Mango, July 12, 2022
- Date Night, Picnic in the Graveyard, Cemetery Gates Media, 2022
- The Unburied Past, The First Line, Vol 24, Issue 2, Summer 2022
- Cold Case, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 4, 2022
- Death Sentence, Black Cat Weekly #51, August 2022
- Something Strange, Land of 10000 Crimes, September 2022
- A Grave Issue, FOUND: An anthology of found footage horror stories, October 2022
- Good Neighbors, Gone, Red Dog Press, November 2022
When we were on vacation last month, I discovered a copy of Belle Ruin by Martha Grimes in the rental house. It’s the third book in a four-book series featuring 12-year-old sleuth Emma Graham. I decided to go back to the beginning and read Hotel Paradise to my wife in the evenings. Interestingly, we don’t learn Emma’s first name until the closing chapters of the book. Now we’re moving on to Cold Flat Junction. I also tore through Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay and am currently reading Three-Edged Sword by Jeff (Dexter) Lindsay. It’s the third caper in his new series featuring the world’s best thief.
We watched a few foreign movies recently: Toscana, about a Danish chef who has to return to his estranged family home to settle the estate and The Rose Maker, a charmer about a woman who hires three people on a prison work-release program to help her save the family business. Peace By Chocolate would also qualify as a foreign movie, I guess—based on the true story of a family of Syrian refugees who end up in a small town in Nova Scotia and start a wildly successful chocolate business. I watched Buried in Barstow because I’ve always liked Angie Harmon. We watched No Time to Die, which I thought was entertaining and then, the other night, Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was fascinating, innovative, creative and thought-provoking. Although much has been about its themes of nihilism and meaningless, to me it was the story of a woman suffering a nervous breakdown because she was dealing with four or five major life crises all at once. I highly recommend it, although I have to warn you that it can be overwhelming!
Lots of TV to talk about. The final episode of Barry was dark and intense, making me wonder how they’re going to pick it up next season. I went back to Russian Doll and finished it, although I wasn’t quite as engaged as I was during the first season. I also went back to Hacks and finished it—the first couple of episodes were hard because Jean Smart’s character was so unlikeable, but things get turned around by the end in a good way. I enjoyed Borgen: Power & Glory, the Danish political series about the discovery of oil in Greenland that threatens to topple the power balance between Denmark and it’s colony. Of particular interest is how the main character allows herself to throw aside some of her fundamental beliefs to the extent that people don’t recognize her any more. Then she has an epiphany.
We are enjoying The Old Man on Hulu, a terrific espionage thriller. Amy Brenneman’s character is particularly interesting, as is the intriguing character played by Alia Shawkat. Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow are excellent in it. I blazed through The Lincoln Lawyer. Great to see Neve Campbell again, and Becki Newton pretty much stole the show. We thoroughly enjoyed the Yellowstone prequel 1883, which is gritty, dark and quasi-mystical, but we couldn’t get into Yellowstone itself.
Of course I polished off the final two episodes of season 4 of Stranger Things, which I’ll be writing more about for Dead Reckonings with Hank Wagner. We are also watching the original three seasons of Midnight Diner (not to be confused with Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, which are the later seasons), a charming series about a Shinjuku diner that opens at midnight, thus attracting an unusual set of patrons. At its heart, it’s about how certain foods transport us back to seminal moments from our childhood.
Season 2 of Grace, starring John Simm, is good, although the plots are based on some well-worn mystery tropes. The motivator for Redemption, starring Paula Malcomson, is fascinating. A British cop gets a call that her estranged daughter has been found dead in Dublin, so she goes there and gets herself attached to the Garda so she can dig into the death, look after the two teenaged grandchildren she didn’t know she had, and also deal with the crime-of-the-week.
My most recent discovery is Manifest, which has strong Flight or Fright connections, as well as showing its Lost influences. It’s about a flight from Jamaica to NY that vanishes, only to land 5½ years later. For the people on board, no time has passed at all (which sets up an interesting situation with a pair of twins, one of whom was on the flight and the other wasn’t). In the aftermath, the passengers experience “callings” that give them missions they have to figure out and solve. Of course, the government wants to figure out what happened to the plane, and factions arise that think the passengers are either angels or demons. It’s a little frothy, but I’m enjoying it. NBC canceled it after the third season cliffhanger, but Netflix is resurrecting it for at least one more.
Glad to see Better Call Saul back for its final episodes. There will ever be a debate about whether it was better than Breaking Bad or not. As Odenkirk said in a recent interview, this show wouldn’t have been possible without Breaking Bad.
Hey—Alan Parsons has a new album out today. I know what I’ll be jamming to while I work!
