The peaceful—occasionally even amicable—relationship between the members of the Irish and Italian families who control much of the crime and labor in Providence, Rhode Island in 1986 is at a crossroads. Members of the older generation of both families are ready to retire. Pasco Ferri, the Italian patriarch, wants to move to Florida and John Murphy, who is showing his age, wants only to dig clams and fish for crabs. The next-in-line of both families are ready to encourage their retirement plans so they can make a name for themselves.
The Irish are woefully outnumbered by the Italians, who have greater local numbers but also the support of the Mafia network in the nearby large cities. The two factions operate by a longstanding set of rules of engagement. Any slight, real or perceived, requires complex negotiations to come up with a satisfactory method of redress to prevent things from escalating. The Irish almost always lose out in these negotiations, and the gentlemen’s rules implemented by the older leaders are less important to the younger generation.
Danny Ryan never wanted to get embroiled in the life of crime but he fell in love with Terri Murphy and she refused to marry someone whose only ambition was to be a fisherman. He may have married into the Murphy clan, but he’s never been embraced by the business arm of that family, relegated to the second tier as a muscle man who’s never killed anyone. Slightly smarter than the average mobster, he attributes the onset of a gang war to a woman, an outsider named Pam.
City on Fire draws inspiration from the Greek epics, including The Iliad. Pam Davies is Winslow’s Helen of Troy, the beautiful woman whose kidnapping set off the Trojan War. Pam wasn’t kidnapped, though. She arrives at an annual interfamily clam bake on the arm of Paulie Moretti and soon causes a crisis when she accuses Liam Murphy of groping her. However, when Liam is hospitalized for a severe beating doled out as payback for his unacceptably disrespectful behavior, she leaves Paulie for Liam. This personal affront is enough to start a war. In truth, the kindling had already been prepared and the logs stacked in preparation for a bonfire. Pam was simply the spark that lit the match that set the whole thing ablaze.
Liam, Danny’s brother-in-law, is the youngest of the Murphy gang. He talks big but lacks motivation, tact and nerve. The only thing he has going for him is good looks. Pam is the book’s real enigma. She remains at Liam’s side even after he devolves into drug addiction and violence, primarily because she understands her part in everything that happened after that night on the beach. Women are mostly relegated to the sidelines in this environment, except for Danny’s long-absent mother, who has her own sphere of power and influence. Although Danny wants nothing to do with her, she steps in to provide assistance after Danny is injured in an ambush-gone-bad.
The press are delighted by the outbreak of violence—it sells newspapers—and the police are willing to let the two factions kill each other so long as they do it in places that won’t disturb ordinary citizens or tourists. After a car bomb and another brutal and very public murder, the authorities send word to tone things down and, for a while, an uneasy truce abides. However, as the two sides jockey for supreme power and internal rifts appear as ambitious men attempt to grab power by removing those who stand in the way, the peace can’t last for long.
Danny, a new father whose wife is seriously ill, wants to find a way out. A complicated heist plan (including a modern-day Trojan Horse) looks like it might provide him with the means to escape Dogtown (the Irish part of Providence) once and for all. However, there’s no honor among thieves…or anyone else, as it turns out.
In addition to the Greek epics (Danny is modeled after Aeneas, the narrator of The Aeneid), City on Fire (the first book in a trilogy) will remind readers of The Godfather, with its rash of back-and-forth murders. The novel explores themes as old as the Greeks—family, loyalty and honor, and the greatest of these, as it turns out, is loyalty.
A couple of last-minute additions to my year-end stuff. My new Benjamin Kane story “A Woman Called Rage” appears in the charity anthology The Place Where Everyone’s Name is Fear. The anthology consists of essays, poetry and short fiction. All proceeds go to Planned Parenthood.
I started and finished Michael Connelly’s most recent novel Desert Rose. I would easily add it to my best-of list for 2022. Review to come shortly at Onyx Reviews. I started City on Fire by Don Winslow but won’t finish it this year. We watched The Fabelmans and Spoiler Alert to close out the year.
I am on the last episode of The Peripheral on Amazon Prime, based on the novel of the same name by William Gibson. It, too, would be an easy addition to my best-of list for 2022. It’s quite imaginative, very well produced, has a terrific cast and some wonderful characters. I also finished the first season of the British crime series Guilt on PBS and will dive into the second season on New Year’s Day.
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Either with my wife or by myself, I watched over 70 movies this year. Only a few of them were films I’d seen before, including a few Star Trek movies. I rectified a longstanding oversight and finally saw Blade Runner and I watched Heat for the first time after reading Heat 2.
A few of them were documentaries and a number were foreign films, including the two Midnight Diner movies that it took quite a while to track down. Several were seasonal movies we watched over the past couple of weeks—A Bad Moms Christmas is not our usual fare, but we like all the actors and it was actually quite funny.
Narrowing down the list to a top 12 was a bit of a challenge. To be honest, some of the titles didn’t remind me of anything at all, so I had to Google them to remember what they were about. That said, I was relieved to discover there were none that I have no recollection of whatsoever. Movie titles aren’t always memorable, as it turns out—even the James Bond films sometimes have titles that don’t jar my memory of the films themselves.
Anyhow, here is my top 12 list, in chronological order. I cheated a bit by adding the documentary that makes a terrific companion to Thirteen Lives.
Don’t Look Up
Nightmare Alley
Licorice Pizza
Death on the Nile
Peace By Chocolate
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
Thirteen Lives / The Rescue
Pinocchio
The Banshees of Inisherin
Emily the Criminal
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
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It’s fair to say I watched a lot of TV this year. There are always the usual network series (Law & Order, The Amazing Race, Survivor, NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, The Rookie, Blue Bloods) watched weekly. I finished my rewatch of Fringe at the beginning of the year followed by a second viewing of all seven seasons of The Shield. I also binged through the existing seasons of Manifest in preparation for the final season, which was split into two halves, the final half yet to come.
PBS had a few good things on offer: Around the World in Eighty Days, the second season of All Creatures Great and Small, Call the Midwife and the cute crime series Miss Scarlet and the Duke. Some long-running series came to an end: This Is Us, Ozark, Better Call Saul, Killing Eve, The Good Fight, Dead to Me. I finally got around to watching the final season of Homeland, too. Two returning series I’ve always enjoyed are CSI and Criminal Minds.
Lots of British and international crime series, including Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, Borgen, Shetland, Karen Pirie, Grace, Redemption, Sherwood, Deadwater Fell, Deadwind, Borderliner, Miss Sherlock, Good Morning, Verônica and Three Pines.
I started Rings of Power but haven’t gotten beyond the first episode yet. I also need to finish the final season of Westworld before it gets pulled from HBO. We gave up on Season 5 of The Crown after only a couple of episodes and I quit Dahmer after one episode, too. I’ll probably watch The Peripheral over the course of the next week, now that I’m caught up on The White Lotus. I really liked Archive 81, but there won’t be a second season so that’s a shame.
While I enjoyed Andor and the latest season of The Orville and all the Star Treks, none of them were quite as good as the shows that made my top 12 list, which follows—again, in chronological order, not in order of preference.
Yellowjackets (Showtime)
From (Epix)
Severance (Apple TV+)
Barry (HBO Max)
1883 (Paramount+)
The Old Man (Hulu)
The Bear (Hulu)
Black Bird (Apple TV+)
Kleo (Netflix)
The Patient (Hulu)
Bad Sisters (Apple TV+)
1899 (Netflix)
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I’ve had better reading years. I’m not exactly sure why I had difficulty carving out time to read. A kind of malaise, I guess. When I picked up my iPad, I found myself playing stupid games instead of reading. I’m not a resolution-maker, but if I were, my resolution for 2023 would be to read more and play fewer games. After a number of years of reading almost exclusively on my iPad, I discovered I made better progress with physical books. A lot of what I get are eGalleys, so I can’t always go back to paper, but I will when I can.
I finished something like 37 “books,” although a couple of them on my list (see the complete list here) are more in the novella category. I will probably finish the book I’m currently reading (Swamp Story by Dave Barry) before the end of the year and maybe even get in another book or two during the long weekends ahead. Some of the books I read this year aren’t new, including four by Martha Grimes, one by Haruki Murakami and a couple of Keigo Higashino mysteries.
As I’ve said on any number of occasions, especially during interviews this past year, I’m not much of a list-maker—especially ordered lists of favorites. So, I’m going to trim my list of books finished in 2022 down to my top 12, but they will be in chronological order rather than ranked order. The titles with hyperlinks are ones I reviewed, either at my review site, Onyx Reviews or somewhere else.
Time to look back at the year that will be drawing to a close in less than two weeks and ruminate. Was it a good year? Was it a bad year? One for the history books or one we’d prefer to forget?
All in all, it wasn’t a bad year at all. My wife and I both managed to get through the third year in a row without getting COVID-19, which I hope I’m not jinxing by saying that. We ventured out into the world a little bit more. Took our first flight since 2019. Spent a couple of weekends down at the coast. Dined out at local restaurants—mostly, but not exclusively outdoors, especially not that the temperatures have dropped.
Speaking of which, we’re going to have a hard freeze starting on Thursday night, with temperatures dropping into the mid-teens (-10°C) without getting above freezing until sometime on Saturday. Pretty unusual for southeast Texas, but I think unusual weather is going to be the rule rather than the exception from now on.
My big publishing news for 2022 was the September release of Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life and Influences. To my delight, the book has been very well received and reviewed (I collected many of the reviews on the page at the link above), and a number of translated editions have been commissioned. Two have been released already and at least four more are planned for next year. I have been immensely pleased by the response to the book. Safe to say it exceeded my expectations.
In support of the book, I have done a lot of interviews, both in print and online. Here they all are, in handy bullet form!
That’s not the end, though—I did one podcast interview last weekend and I have another one lined up for the middle of January.
I also published one interview where I was on the other side of the questioning: an interview with Stephen King & Richard Chizmar about Gwendy’s Final Task, published in Fangoria last February.
I published a few essays this year, too.
The Long Walk: An Introduction in Three Parts, The Long Walk, Centipede Press, 2023.
(The Long Walk intro won’t be published until next month and was written in 2019, but I’m including it here just because it’s so cool.)
It was also a productive year for short fiction publications—quite possibly a record year for me. Here are all the short stories that came out in 2022 (not including translations of previously published stories). They run the gamut from crime to science fiction to horror, a pretty good blend in my humble opinion.
I have several stories cued up for 2023 already, too.
What comes next? My agent is going to start shopping around a novel in the new year, which is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. I also plan to write another novella for a follow-up to Dissonant Harmonies, a story that I have been calling “The Dead of Night,” a sort-of sequel to “The Dead of Winter.” I’m also toying with the idea of putting together a mini-collection of four seasonal stories, three of which were published in Unsettling Reads anthologies, the fourth yet to be written.
Beyond that—who knows?
Stay tuned in the coming days for my top X lists of books, TV series and movies, not necessarily in that order.
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Today is publication day for Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences. I’m quite pleased with myself that I’m now able to type out that entire title without looking it up, including the serial comma! The title was selected by my editor at Quarto, so it’s taken me a while to “learn” it! The way I remember the order is that, to me, the work is supreme. I’m only interested in the biographical aspect insofar as it influences what King wrote. All those little snapshots that somehow expanded into full-blown novels.
The reviews and reader reactions so far have been gratifying. People really seem to like this book (said in my best Sally Field voice). I hear from my publicist that the first printing is essentially sold out from the publisher and they’ve ordered a second printing pre-publication. That’s great—definitely the first time that’s ever happened to me.
The review below took me by surprise. It’s from something called “The It List” on Yahoo Entertainment, and it’s written by the Editor-in-Chief. You have to scroll down a bit to find it, but it’s possibly the only time my name will be mentioned in an article that leads off by talking about Jon Hamm!
A lot of friends and people I’ve encountered in person and online over the years have helped spread the word about this book far and wide, for which I am deeply appreciative. Shout out to Brian Keene, who mentioned it a few times this morning on Brian Keene Radio—which you should really check out, by the way. Where else will you hear Johnny Cash leading into Prince or Abba leading into Black Sabbath? It’s quite a musical education!
I still have a handful of podcast interviews to do in the next week and a half, and the signing event at Village Books is slated for October 18. It was supposed to be tonight, but the supply chain messed around with us. If you click the link in the first paragraph, you’ll go to a page that talks about the book, has links to interviews, review excerpts, and a list of places where you can buy the book online, including two where you can order signed copies.
It’s been quite a ride so far. Big shout out to Steve Roth, my publicist, who has been enthusiastically and energetically—not to mention effectively—promoting this book far and wide. It makes a huge difference to have someone in your corner like that.
Stay tuned for news about translations. Four are in the works already and I’m hopeful more will be forthcoming now that the book is out in the world.
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I’ve often talked about my Stephen King origin story, how I randomly picked up a paperback copy of ‘Salem’s Lot at a used bookstore in 1979 and was immediately hooked. That book was not only my gateway to King—it stoked an interest in horror in general that had previously eluded me (save for a copy of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which I’d read many years earlier).
There was a convenience store not far from the university dorm where I lived in the early 80s. I don’t have as clear a memory of the evening I went out, probably to get some Pepsi and snacks while I studied. I feel like it was wintertime, but I’m not sure. What I do recall is seeing a paperback copy of Peter Straub’s breakout novel Ghost Story at a display near the checkout. This would probably have been in 1980, since the hardcover release was in 1979. As with ‘Salem’s Lot, I was hooked and had to read more by Straub.
I tracked down copies of If You Could See Me Now and Julia after that. I think I had already become a hardcover buyer by the time Shadowland came out and I definitely was when Floating Dragon was published in 1983. Eventually, I tracked down copies of Marriages and Under Venus (when it was reprinted in hardcover by Stealth Press), and I’ve been keeping up with his new releases ever since.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, my next encounter with Peter came about when he was the judge of Twilight Zone magazine’s first short fiction contest. I hadn’t published anything at the time, so I decided to submit something. I can’t even imagine what the manuscript looked like. Probably single spaced on mill paper (my father worked in a papermill, so we always had stacks of that cheap, brownish paper around). Certainly nothing resembling what a proper manuscript should be. Apart from that, the story was derivative and cringe-worthy. The winner of the contest was Dan Simmons, so you can see how outclassed I was. Fortunately—fortunately!—Peter claimed to have no recollection of my story. Phew.
In the 1990s, internet newsgroups (aka Usenet) was the place to be if you were a fan of something. Peter was an early adopter of the technology, active on both his dedicated group (alt.books.peter-straub) and on the King group (alt.books.stephen-king). Those newsgroups have been preserved by Google, although you have to get through all the modern spam to get back to when they were thriving places. Someone should go through all that stuff someday and curate Peter’s contributions. For example, in 1997 he wrote:
I had no intention of writing anything as ambitious as a trilogy until I finished Mystery. At that point, it seemed to me that I still had not truly come to the end of Tim Underhill’s saga, that he had more to say to me. And I thought it would be useful to combine or link Tim with Tom Pasmore, and in that way to see what Tom what like as an adult. I guess the real center of the impulse was the sense that in spite of everything I had done, I was not really finished with the story, which means at least in part that I had more to learn from it.
A lot of insights written at the time books were published. Hm. Note to self.
Peter and I started emailing each other off-list in the late 1990s. The first message I have from him was a discussion of “Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff.” He was intrigued to hear that King’s Bag of Bones was also inspired by “Bartleby the Scrivener,” which had been released as part of the Penguin 60s program, which had stories by both King (“Umney’s Last Case”) and Straub (“The Blue Rose”).
In 1997, Peter was touring in support of Magic Terror and had an appearance in Dallas. I let him know I’d be attending and gave him my (first-ever, brand-spanking new) cell phone number. I made the three-hour drive up I-45 to Dallas and spent some time getting the lay of the land—I’d never been in Dallas before other than DFW airport. I had just tracked down the store where the signing would be held when my phone rang. It was Peter, inviting me to drop by the hotel where he was staying for a pre-event drink. It took me far longer than it should have to find the place (no Google maps in those days!) but I eventually got there and met Peter in the bar. He had a couple of scotches to brace himself for the signing and I gamely kept up. He invited me to join him in the limo taking him to the event. (I was thankful for that after a couple of stiff drinks!) Afterward, he asked the woman who was assigned to escort him around for a restaurant recommendation and he invited me to join him for a very meaty Dallas meal. I don’t really remember much of what we talked about, but it was an evening for the ages. I do recall that he introduced me to the works of someone who would become another favorite author, Graham Joyce.
A few years later, Peter was back in Dallas, this time at a literary event held at the Texas Motor Speedway Club in Fort Worth. (Tony Hillerman and Dan Jenkins were also in attendance, along with some other authors). I met up with my online friend (and uber-King collector) Bob Jackson (who contributed scans of rare material to The Stephen King Illustrated Companion), and we hung out with Peter and his wife for part of the event. Bob took this picture.
I saw Peter again that year at my first World Horror Convention, in Seattle. I had just started writing the column “News from the Dead Zone” for Cemetery Dance and had a few stories in an amateur anthology called Royal Aspirations III. I remember sitting at a table in a hallway outside of the programming rooms beside John Urbancik, trying to hawk our wares. Peter came by and I hailed him. John immediately offered to give Peter a copy of one of his books. Peter pulled out his wallet and offered to buy a copy of our books. That’s the supportive kind of guy he was.
In 2004, Peter was kind enough to supply a blurb for my first book, The Road to the Dark Tower. He wrote, “Bev Vincent is a true King insider, and all of his knowledge radiates through this comprehensive meditation on the Dark Tower books. His book is essential to every reader of Stephen King’s magnificent work.”
He was gregarious and funny. What other writer would create an alter ego to mock his work? Professor Putney Tyson Ridge (the Chairman and sole member of the Department of Popular Culture at Popham College) was a frequent poster on Straub’s website, critiquing—nay, savaging!—most of his novels and collections. In her 2009 interview for Salon, Laura Miller described PTR as “the man Straub might have been if he’d gotten stuck in academia.” At some point, Peter decided to put Ridge out of his misery, posting his obituary.
I know horror authors who are fans of soap operas (Brian Keene, I’m looking at you!), but how many do you know who actually appeared on a soap opera? Peter had a recurring role on One Life to Live as the blind retired cop Pete Braust that seemed to delight him.
We crossed paths many times over the years. He was a regular at NECON until his doctor reportedly forbade him from going. I remember the year the conference was held at Salve Regina in Newport, R.I. One evening a small group of us sat with him at a table on a covered deck while he regaled us with stories, fueled by a special bottle of vodka brought by one of the attendees. He was excited to tell us every detail of his as-yet-unpublished novel In the Night Room. There was a scene where a man looks through the window of a house and sees someone inside. “That’s it!” he said. “That’s what the book is all about!” Another memorable conference appearance was the time he and Gahan Wilson participated in a fundraiser where they took suggestions from the audience for illustrations for Wilson to draw on the spot. That was fun.
His wife recognized me in the audience at the Wavedancer Foundation benefit in New York and insisted I come back stage to where Peter, Steve, John Grisham and Pat Conroy were waiting to go on stage. I have a signed copy of the large-text edition of Black House from that event. I also saw him with his daughter, Emma, at an event in Brooklyn where the two Straubs shared the stage with Owen and Stephen King.
He read from “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” at the World Horror Convention in San Antonio. Afterward, I went out to the lobby and tweeted about the reading and how much I was looking forward to reading the entire novella. Then I went into the next panel, which was about graphic novels. Halfway through, Peter came in and sat beside me. In his stage-whispery voice, he told me about his own experience with graphic novels—The Green Woman, co-written with actor Michael Easton–and then proceeded to rummage around in his bag. He produced the manuscript of “Ballard and Sandrine,” signed and inscribed it and gave it to me. That’s one of my treasures.
I’ve read just about all of Peter’s fiction. Sometimes I struggled with his shorter works, but I always thoroughly enjoyed his novels, especially the way they seemed to inspect each other from different points of view. I think I’ll have to go back and reread some of them. Bill Sheehan’s terrific book At the Foot of the Story Tree stood as a model for me about how to explore a writer’s career. Sadly, it only covers up to Mr. X in 2000. Maybe Bill could be convinced to do an update? That would only involve four or five novels, a couple of short story collections, five novellas and some non-fiction.
Although we are all sad at the loss of a fine writer and a great man, it has been heartening to see tribute after tribute on Facebook. So many people had either long, ongoing friendships with him or shorter but memorable and inspiring encounters with him. He seemed to have time for everyone he met, especially in public, but not only there. He was fun-loving, gregarious, supportive, energetic, intelligent and kind. And a helluva writer. He shall be missed.
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Why most notably? The newsletter’s managing editor suggested that instead of doing the interview herself that I should ask Stephen King to interview me. They had done that before with Lee Child. I was understandably nervous about passing this request along to King. It’s not the sort of thing we normally do. I have interviewed him a few times in the past and we interviewed each other for the audiobook release of Flight or Fright, but this felt like a big ask. Fortunately he agreed without hesitation and the interview is the cover story for the issue. Even got my smiling face on the cover! Check it out—it’s pretty cool.
There have been a few reviews already and I’ve been pleased by the early response. You can read excerpts from the reviews here, along with links to the original publications.
I also had time to review King’s new book Fairy Tale (out today) for Cemetery Dance Online/News from the Dead Zone. The review was posted on Friday.
To get ready for the promo blitz (I have six video interviews set up this month and just finished writing up an email interview), my wife and I spent a long weekend in a beachfront house in Surfside Beach, about 90 miles from where we live. It’s a favorite getaway destination. We knew there was a decent chance it would rain all weekend, but we didn’t care. Our usual rental house was already taken, so we stayed in a different place, one that’s bit smaller but exactly right for us. It’s off the beaten path, whereas the other place is across the street from a busy restaurant with occasional bands playing late into the night. This new place is a lot quieter.
During the first night, we were awakened by brilliant flashes of lightning that were almost simultaneous with crashes of thunder that shook the house. (That’s not hard to do—houses there are on stilts to guard against flood damage.) The rain was vigorous and long-lasting. The lightning was intense. We enjoyed it.
However, it didn’t rain all that much after that. A few showers here and there, although it often looked like it was about to rain. We went for a walk on the beach one day but soon discovered the reason why the realtor had recommended we take mosquito spray with us. That nice green expanse between the house and the beach, which is a vegetation-covered dune, was home to swarms of mosquitos brought to life by the rain we’ve had over the past few weeks. They attacked us en masse. It was so bad we decided not to hazard the 30-foot trek again. Ferocious bastards. In the evenings when there was a breeze we could sit on the deck without being attacked, which was nice. There were also swarms of dragonflies, which were fascinating to watch as they darted about, feeding on mosquitos. Apparently each one could eat dozens, if not hundreds, of them every day, so they were our friends and we cheered them on.
I read three books while we were there. Two of them were different takes on similar subjects: ripping off money from drug dealers. First, I finished The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias, which has a mildly supernatural take on the subject. Then I read Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner, the literary sequel to the 1995 movie. If I’ve seen Heat, I don’t have much memory of it. The book does a good job of bringing readers up to speed, and it is simultaneously a sequel and a prequel to the events of that film. I thought I’d be covered with those books, but I was finished with them by Saturday. Fortunately, there were several books in the rental house, so I read a cozy mystery called Third Degree by Maggie Barbieri on Sunday.
This has been a bang-up year for short story publications. I have sixteen new stories either already out or scheduled before the end of the year. Recent pubs include:
Convergence talks with contributors (including me) to Low Down Dirty Vote, a crime fiction anthology focused on voter suppression that contains my story “Kane’s Alibi.”
I also stumbled upon this nice review of my story in Road Kill V6: “The standout of the anthology is ‘The House of Sad Sounds,’ by Bev Vincent. A psychological horror story with a twist, this little gem reminded me of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Vincent’s story would not be out of place in a high-literary story collection, and not because of any fancy stylistic tricks or high-falutin language.”
I discovered there were two feature-length installments of Midnight Diner, one of our favorite Japanese series. Set in a Shinjuku diner that is only open from midnight to seven a.m. and run by a mysterious scarred man known only as “master,” each episode features a particular dish that has resonance for one of the diner’s colorful patrons. Only one dish is posted on his menu, but he will make anything anyone requests, provided he has the ingredients. It’s charming. The two movies are only available on the Viki Rakuten app, but they’re only 99¢ each, which can be linked to your iTunes account. They take place between the three-season Midnight Diner series and the two-season Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories series. With the increased length, they allow a somewhat deeper dive into the characters outside of the diner, but only a little. The series is based on a manga called Shin’ya Shokudō. It’s also been adapted into Chinese and Korean versions.
I’m all in for House of the Dragon, though I’ve only seen the first two episodes so far. I’ve also seen a couple of episodes of She Hulk, which is cute and doesn’t take itself all that seriously. The best thing I’ve seen recently is a German Netflix series called Kleo. It’s set in the Berlins in 1990, after the wall came down but before reunification. Kleo is an East German assassin who was sent to prison by her handlers in 1987 for unknown reasons. Political prisoners are released in ’90 and she’s free to travel now, so she’s hell-bent to find out who betrayed her and why. The show reminded me a lot of Killing Eve, and it’s star, Jella Haase, bears more than a passing resemblance to Elizabeth Moss. It has some slapstick moments, but it’s also bloody and violent. Just my jam.
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Publication of Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences has been pushed back a month due to supply-chain/transportation issues. Getting the book from the printer to the warehouse is proving to be complicated. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t preorder the book, if you’re so inclined. Just click the link above to get to a page that has information, including where you can order a signed/personalized copy. The delay means an extra month of promo. It also meant that the Village Bookstore, which is hosting a launch event, had to rearrange everything quite late in the game.
I’ll be talking about the book when James Douglas interviews me during the Stephen King Rules film festival next weekend. My spot is on Sunday, August 21 at 4PM CT. This is the first of a number of interviews I’ll be giving in the coming weeks. The following Sunday night, I’ll be on Geek to Me Radio. I’ll be interviewed by the Crime Writers of Canada in early September and by Jeff Rutherford for his Reading And Writing Podcast as well. Check out my message board for more information as it becomes available.
There will also be something really cool happening on September 1st that I’m dying to talk about but can’t until it happens. Stay tuned!
We finally had another batch of rain after a three-week dry spell. When we go out, my wife and I only eat at places that have outdoor seating these days. There’s a place near us called the Kitchen that makes my wife’s favorite chicken sandwiches, so we go there fairly often. It was starting to rain when we pulled into the parking lot, but there’s a cover over the patio, although three sides are open. While I was inside placing our order, a squall started, with rain blowing horizontally, strong enough to push the chairs around. So we had to get our food to go. It was a good rainstorm, though. Much needed. The grass took advantage of it and started to grow all of a sudden. I had to mow the lawn for the first time since probably late June. It’s been hot ever since, but they promise us a week of rain starting in a couple of days.
I’ve had a rash of short story acceptances lately, some of which I haven’t yet announced because I haven’t signed the contracts yet. Here is what to look forward in the coming weeks and months:
The Unburied Past, The First Line, Vol 24, Issue 2, Summer 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
Aliana, Shining in the Dark, Dimensiones Ocultas (Spain), December 2022
Alas, I won’t be at Bouchercon when the anthology containing “Something Strange” comes out.
Those of you who’ve followed me for a while know that Brian Keene and I often discuss music. It was the motivator behind our collaboration Dissonant Harmonies. Recently, Brian started up his pirate radio station again and I started listening to it about a week ago as I work. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I tweeted words to the effect “Want to get musical whiplash? Listen to Brian Keene Radio. Bounce from heavy metal to hardcore rap to folk to country to yacht rock to pop to classic rock to horror short stories read by a variety of authors.” I consider myself fairly up on the music of our generation, but there have been some real surprises in his playlist that have me adding music to my iTunes console left and right. Check it out — just google the phrase. It plays through your browser. The juxtaposition of songs will have your head spinning. I guarantee it!
Since my last post, we’ve watched a handful of movies and documentaries. The best of the lot is Thirteen Lives (Amazon), about the rescue of the boys on a football team trapped in a cave during a monsoon. The Ron Howard film is truly excellent. As a follow-up, we watched the documentary The Rescue on Disney+, which sets the record straight, so I’m glad we watched that second. We enjoyed The Day the Music Died, about Don McLean’s most famous song. I also liked the documentary about Shania Twain, Not Just a Girl. The documentary Pennywise: The Story of IT is well worth a watch. Great interviews with the surviving cast and crew members, as well as terrific behind the scenes footage from filming. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a quirky film starring Emma Thompson that has what can only be described as some brave scenes. The Gray Man on Netflix is entertaining, especially because it has Ana de Armas.
On television/streaming, as with many people I am still processing the finale of Better Call Saul, which stuck the landing and then some. It turned out to be a love story after all. The Bear (Hulu) is an interesting story about running a small Chicago family-owned restaurant and dealing with all the crap that goes along with that. Black Bird (Apple TV+) is a series from Dennis Lehane based on a real serial killer case. It’s gripping and has a terrific cast. While I was looking up something else, I realized I’d never watched the final season of Homeland, so I rectified that. It was a good way to go out. Then I binged through The Orville: NewHorizons, which takes what was originally parody or spoof and turns the show into serious science fiction tackling some big issues. I watched a couple of Britbox shows that were good, Crime and The Tower. I’m currently in the midst of the second season of a Brazilian crime series called Good Morning, Verônica (Netflix). It’s not as polished as some of the European shows, but it’s decent.
I’m currently rereading Stephen King’s Fairy Tale in preparation for writing my review. I recently finished Mr. Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll and Call Me a Cab by Donald E. Westlake (reviews available at the links) and Ocean State by Stewart O’Nan, which I haven’t reviewed yet.
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His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Borderlands 5, Ice Cold, and The Blue Religion. Four of his stories were collected in When the Night Comes Down and another four in a CD Select eBook. His story "The Bank Job" won the Al Blanchard Award. "The Honey Trap" from Ice Cold was nominated for an ITW Thriller Award in 2015 and "Zombies on a Plane" was nominated for an Ignotus Award in 2020.
His non-fiction has appeared in diverse magazines, including The Poetry
Foundation, Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Screem, Pensacola
Magazine and Texas Gardener. He has been a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine since 2001 and is a former member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews. He has served as a judge for the Al Blanchard, Shirley Jackson and Edgar Awards.
His work has been translated into: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, HItalian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian
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Why most notably? The newsletter’s managing editor suggested that instead of doing the interview herself that I should ask Stephen King to interview me. They had done that before with Lee Child. I was understandably nervous about passing this request along to King. It’s not the sort of thing we normally do. I have interviewed him a few times in the past and we interviewed each other for the audiobook release of 
