A new story of mine, Chess Match, was just published in the October issue of Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder. It’s a tale of an ancient being living in our world, who must face down an old adversary. Check it out, and let me know what you think.
October has long been my favorite month. I love Christmas, too, as well as every other holiday that affords me time to spend with my children. But there’s always been something special about October 31. As a child, I knew Halloween was a night devoted to kids, where magical things happened, where you had a bit of independence to go out with friends and have a grand time. The costumes, the folklore, the changing of the seasons, all add warmth and wonder to this grand day. My own children have enabled me to experience these feelings again. It is so fun enjoying the fall with them: decorating the house, creating costumes, getting ready. The anticipation of it, the colors and sounds and stories, are almost better than the day itself.
The stories are the things that really animate it for me. The list of writers I admire in this season is almost endless, but it begins somewhere around Shakespeare and continues into the present. Shelley, Poe, Hawthorne, Stoker, Lovecraft, Jackson, Bradbury—my list goes on and on. The only thing that stops me from reading all these authors constantly is lack of time.
This October, time permitting, I intend to have a project on this blog, where I write some thoughts about some of my very favorite tales in the genre. I can’t promise I’ll do so every day, though that is the goal. Certainly, I’ll do a post weekly, or every couple of days. These posts aren’t meant to be comprehensive, scholarly, or to offer some kind of profound critique. It’s mostly just for me, to write up thoughts and impressions and appreciation of these tales that affected me: why I like them so much, how they work, why I have such affection for them, in that vein. Hopefully I’ll add to the catalog throughout the year, with other seasonal tales. Maybe some readers out there feel the same way about some of these stories. My hope is to document some of my very favorite books and stories, and perhaps turn some readers out there onto some tales they may have overlooked, or never heard of. There are a great number of unappreciated stories out there that ought to have more attention, in my view.
So, I’ll see how it goes. If you’re a like minded reader, I hope you join in the fun by commenting or offering your own thoughts.
I’ll probably begin early, before October 1, with some other seasonal type stories to get started. I’ll throw in some children’s stories that I’ve been reading with my family as well.
I’ll post more soon. I hope those reading this enjoy the season. I plan to be outside as much as possible in the next six weeks, to enjoy the beauty of fall, before it gets too cold and the leaves are gone.
Happy Autumnal equinox. Enjoy your fall!
For most of my life I’ve read copious amounts of fantasy and science fiction. I recall the Wild Cards series coming out in the late 80s; an acquaintance of mine sang the book’s praises, but the idea of comic book characters was something that at the time, as a 16 year old, I felt I was outgrowing. Maybe I was self-conscious reading Batman and Superman and the X-Men as an older teen, and advertising that I still loved those characters seemed unwise. Though of course, I read them at home, away from my peers.
During the recent holiday break, I was looking for something light to read, and picked up the first volume of Wild Cards, that series I had shunned in my young, foolish days. If George RR Martin edited it, it must be good, I reasoned. I’ve been wanting to read Winds of Winter for some years now, but alas, it seems I’ll have to wait for that. I have read almost everything else George published, so I gave it a try.
How I wish I could go back 30+ years and tell sixteen year old me to read Wild Cards. I was the perfect demographic for it back then. I guess I still am. What a fun, crazy ride I had with these stories. I didn’t love all of them, but there were enough good ones to keep me interested, and the ones I didn’t like as much still had some cool elements.
Wild Cards, for those of you unfamiliar with this now-32-volume series, is a shared world alternate universe filled with superheroes, in which, at the end of World War II, an alien virus outbreak turns a large segment of humanity into mutants. It kills some of them outright, horribly disfigures others (known as Jokers) and turns some into superhumans (aces). It’s a funny, neat idea, full of noirish and comic elements, enough to keep an adult comic book reader happy during these long winter nights. I particularly enjoyed Roger Zelazny’s entry, as well as Martin’s. I don’t want to spoil the stories, they are too fun. If you enjoy comic books, but want something a little darker and more adult themed, give these books a try.
I’d never read something like this collection before. I loved the idea of a shared world in which lots of writers try their hand in storytelling in the same setting. I also really enjoyed the way these comics were written with adults in mind. I’d never seen this before in fiction, except perhaps when I read the novelization of the 1989 Batman movie as a teen. These stories reminded me of Frank Miller’s work with Batman, and Alan Moore’s many legendary tales of Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and others. I don’t regularly read comic books these days, but this first volume in the Wild Cards series made me want to revisit my favorites, and maybe read some more in the Wild Cards series.
The Wikipedia entry for this series says that Martin and his friends started the series after playing a GURPS style RPG based on superheroes, which makes perfect sense. The detailed backstories in each tale in this volume are a perfect fit with an RPG campaign of this style. Probably most people who have played in a campaign thought of turning it into a book (what a great idea!), but leave it to uncle George to actually pull it off. I was also reminded of the wonderful Dragonlance books, which were similarly based on a D and D campaign. I may also have to try Thieves World, which is a series I never read, but which was also a shared world.
There are so many books, and never enough time for me to read all my favorites, but I’m glad I gave this series a try. Winter is the perfect time to stay inside and curl up with a book. You’ll have fun with Wild Cards, I think. I just hope Winds of Winter comes out soon.
It’s my favorite day of the year! Here’s a seasonal story I published a couple of years ago, called “The All Hallows Knight,” in which a young boy tries to revive the spirit of the dead, and gets more than he expected. Happy All Hallows Eve, one and all. https://issuu.com/theparagonjournal/docs/final_version_tales_of_reverie/10
Art is by Joseph Mugnaini, who did many wonderful illustrations for Ray Bradbury’s work. This one is from The Halloween Tree, first published in 1972.
I very much enjoyed ‘One Bite at a Time,’ a book with the subtitle “a collection of paintings and two sentence horrors,” by N.M. Scuri, and illustrations by Byron Rempel. This book was enormous fun to look at and pore over, with some really chilling and darkly funny tales that I had a great time reading.
“Hell is a Library” was one tale that cracked me up. As a librarian and twilight zone aficianado, I loved this, which said simply “I’m the last man on Earth, and I can read all I want. Now where are my glasses?” The accompanying illustration is a man with his back to us, in a seemingly apocalyptic landscape. “A Dainty Dish” was another memorable entry, with a painting of a tentacled monstrosity beside the ominous words: “The Old One Cthulhu, baked in a pie.” And there are plenty of zombies here, too, of the human and animal variety, as in “Red Rover,” in which a canine pal keeps on killing even after he’s been dead a month.
Many of these stories sound like they could be the opening of a great short story or novel, the seeds are here for some fun stuff. Scuri has some precise, tightly controlled language to set the atmosphere for the really wonderful paintings, which reminded me of Ralph Steadman’s illustrations of Hunter Thompson’s books.
I highly recommend this engaging collection for fans of horror, comics, and poetic writing. It’s a unique book that is loads of fun. This was listed as “Volume One,” so hopefully there will be more installations to come.
In “Thirteen Stories and Paintings,” Scuri and Rempel take the idea a bit further. Here we have similar kinds of haunting illustrations, with flash fiction horror tales. “Hooked” is one such memorable story, about a night of scary storytelling that goes horribly wrong. “The Sad End of Perry Belmon” is a Joker-like tale of a lost soul, trying forever to win friends, yet always failing miserably. This is another fine, ghoulish collection of stories and art that I think would please horror fans, folks who like The Walking Dead, who enjoy Lovecraft and Poe and Stephen King and all the better things in life that make us uneasy.
Check these books out! They’re fun and engaging and I think you’ll like them as much as I did. You can find them on amazon.
I’ve shared these before, but here are a few of my short stories that are right for this time of year.
The Touch is the story of a young girl with strange powers who must stand up to cruelty in the neighborhood, and in her own home.
In The Song of Thetis, a strange apparition absconds with a young boy, tearing a family apart.
The All Hallows Knight is a Halloween story about an unexpected visitor who shows up on October 31.
Christopher Tuthill 