The Monsters Without (Part One: The Magic Eye (continued again))

There was torn up mail with his mother’s name on it all over the floor in the living room. The two policemen were talking to each other on the front porch. The mailman seemed to be gone. He went over to his mom and put his arms around her waist. Her hand came down to gently rest on his shoulders.

The policemen came back to the door and the other one, the one who had not gone into his room with him, said, “Ms. Freeman, we’re not going to take you in…”

His mother’s “What?” was explosive and sudden. “Take me in?” Jeremiah had never seen his mother angry like this. “After what that racist asshole said, you’re talking about taking me in!”

The man rested his hand on his gun, stepped forward, and said, “Ma’am…”

Jeremiah watched the gun with wide eyes. His mother had told him about how he should never get upset at policemen or resist them or talk back to them or anything like that, because that was how black men, and boys, got shot, even in the back, when they had done nothing wrong. He tugged on his mother’s arm, but she pulled her hand away and continued yelling.

“That… man… called me a nigger in my own home and ripped up all of my mail. You fucking watched him do it!”

The policeman took another step forward and unsnapped his holster. Jeremiah’s heart raced as hard as it had when the monster was outside and he would have peed himself if he hadn’t already done it. “Ma’am, you need to calm down. We can still take you in.” His eyes darted down to Jeremiah, “And have someone come take away your boy.”

His mother froze. The policeman who had gone to Jeremiah’s room with him stepped up and put his hand on the angry policeman’s arm, “Mike, stop. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Mike’s” eyes got tight, “I don’t know; I think she’s assaulting an officer of the law. You’re not assaulting an officer, are you, ma’am?”

“Leave her alone, Mike.”

“Mike” didn’t look like he wanted to leave her alone. No one even breathed for what felt like hours. But after a moment, he snapped the clasp back on his holster and turned and stormed out of the house, leaving only the policeman, the one Jeremiah could only think of as the “good” one, in the house with them.

He spoke softly, “Ms. Freeman, I’m sorry about all of this. And I’m sorry to say that someone from CPS will be in contact with you. It’s policy after a domestic violence call when a child is involved.”

Jeremiah could feel his mother tense up, but she didn’t speak again. She just stood there. Jeremiah didn’t know what to do.

“You need to report your mailman. If nothing else, him ripping up your mail is a federal crime. You need to get it on record.”

Jeremiah quit listening and only stared at his mom. Tears were running down her cheeks. At some point, the policeman left. At some point later, his mother sat down on the couch and cried for real. Jeremiah sat on the floor next to her, to keep his wet pants off of the furniture, and held onto her leg. The only thing he knew at that point was that he was not going to get to go outside.

And now for the fine print:
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Also, if you really enjoyed it, consider really helping by purchasing one of my published books. There's plenty to choose from. If you need a recommendation, let me know.
Thanks!

The Monsters Without (Part One: The Magic Eye (continued))

His mother ran into the room and scooped him up. She was saying words to him that he couldn’t hear or understand. He needed to get away from the window, and he couldn’t do that with her holding him. He fought and kicked to get away, tried to make her understand. All that would come out was “Monster! Monster!” Then there was a knock, a banging, on the door, and he was sure that it was the monster coming to get him, and he broke free and ran to his bedroom and hid in the closet.

He hoped his mother would get away, too. He wanted to go make her run away, but he was too scared. He realized he’d peed his pants. He could hear the front door opening and tried to scream at her to run away, tried to go to her to make her stop, but he couldn’t get himself to move. He sat huddled as far back in the closet as he could get himself, hoping the monster couldn’t smell the pee on him or hear him breathing.

There were no screams. No sounds of a monster attacking his mom. But he knew what he’d seen, and he knew the monster had seen him, too.

Then there were sounds of an argument. Someone, a man, accusing his mom of beating her child. That must mean him. His closet door opened, and there was his mother staring down at him. “Jeremiah, I need you to come tell the mailman that I wasn’t hitting you.”

He stared at her. The words didn’t make any sense to him. His mom had never hit him. Where was the monster?

“Is the monster gone?”

“There’s no monster, Jeremiah. I need you to come with me. Come tell the man.”

She leaned down to pick him up. He let her before he remembered his wet pants, then he felt bad and ashamed, like a baby, because he was getting pee all over his mother. She carried him out to the living room where the mailman was standing in the doorway on his phone talking to someone. His mother nearly dropped him.

“What are you doing?” She was yelling at the man.

“Look, lady, I know what it sounds like when someone is beating their kid. I’ve called the police.”

“Get out! Get out of my house!”

But it was too late. The police came. He heard the man telling the police about how his mom had been beating him, about how everyone knew about black women and how they beat their kids and, if you didn’t watch them, about how they would beat everyone’s kids, especially white kids. What was she even doing in this neighborhood, this white neighborhood where niggers didn’t belong. It made him feel ashamed for being black, like he didn’t belong in the world and like he had done something wrong by being born this way. No wonder the white boys wouldn’t play with him.

A policeman took him into another room to talk to him. It made him uncomfortable, this big white man in the blue uniform taking him away from his mother. Maybe it was because the small white man in the lighter blue uniform was saying such bad things, but he wanted to be with his mom, wanted her to hold him, keep him safe from the monster and from the mean mailman.

“Can you answer some questions for me?”

He stared blankly at the policeman for a moment then nodded his head.

“Was your mother hitting you?”

He shook his head no.

“Why were you screaming?”

He hung his head not wanting to say. He didn’t think anyone would believe him.

The man reached out and gently lifted his head up to look into his eyes, “I need you to tell me why you were screaming and why you were calling your mother a monster.”

He tried to answer, but all that came out was a hoarse whisper, “The monster was on the sidewalk.”

“What?”

“I saw a monster on the sidewalk.”

The policeman didn’t believe him about the monster. He knew the policeman didn’t because he kept going back to asking him questions about whether his mother hit him, and the policeman didn’t seem to believe him when he told the man that his mother had never hit him because he kept asking the question over and over again.

Eventually, the policeman left the room after looking him over for bruises. He wasn’t sure why the man wanted to see if he had bruises. He followed after.

And now for the fine print:
If you enjoyed this, please share it. Tweet or link it on facebook or whatever. It helps.
Also, if you really enjoyed it, consider really helping by purchasing one of my published books. There's plenty to choose from. If you need a recommendation, let me know.
Thanks!

The Monsters Without (Part One: The Magic Eye)

He was eight the first time it happened, sitting and staring out the living room window into the front yard. He wanted to go outside and play, but his mother kept telling him he had to wait for her. “No going outside alone!” It was just the front yard! He would be right there, right in the front yard. Why couldn’t he go out?

It looked like a pretty day. Bright sunshine. Breeze blowing in the trees by the street. It wouldn’t be too hot, he knew, because it hadn’t been too hot all week. Finally, it was feeling like fall and the summer heat was gone. And it was Saturday! He did not want to sit inside all day. He did that at school. He wanted to go play!

And, look, there went some kids running down the street. He didn’t recognize them, though. White boys not from his neighborhood. He wondered if they’d let him play with them. They mostly didn’t look older than him, and the one trailing behind looked like he wasn’t even in school yet. A baby. They ran on down the street, and he realized they were probably going to the park two blocks away. They didn’t have any moms with them… “Mom…!”

“You have to wait! I’m busy!”

“But Mom!”

“I said no, Jeremiah.”

He grumbled and went back to staring out the window. His mind drifted off to thinking about the boys and what they must be doing and how much fun they must be having and outside became out of focus, so out of focus that he started staring at the pane of glass instead. Staring at his own reflection in the window, his dark skin and brown eyes and tight, curly black hair. He wondered again if the boys would play with him. Sometimes white boys would act like he wasn’t even there and he was left to play by himself.

But that was better than being stuck in the house.

“Mom!”

“Not right now!”

He breathed heavily and went back to staring at his reflection in the glass. Then outside. Then his reflection. Until he discovered that if he made his eyes hurt by looking at outside and at his reflection at the same time that he could see his face on things. Like the tree by the street. Or on the street. Or on the door of the car. Or on the monster walking down the sidewalk…

It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. It must have been ten feet tall! White but dirty all over like it was covered in grease or oil, splotches of it everywhere. Except for the white pointed head. That was so white it almost hurt his eyes. One arm was scaly, a sickly green yellow color, and had huge claws on its long-fingered hand, so long the claws almost touched the ground. The other arm was a bunch of tentacles, slightly more green than the scaly arm but still sickly looking, writhing and squirming in the air, glistening and dripping with slime. When he started screaming, it looked at him, and he saw its blazing eyes and huge open mouth full of long teeth.

He fell over out of the chair, screaming and trying to get away.

And now for the fine print:
If you enjoyed this, please share it. Tweet or link it on facebook or whatever. It helps.
Also, if you really enjoyed it, consider really helping by purchasing one of my published books. There's plenty to choose from. If you need a recommendation, let me know.
Thanks!

My Empty Chair

The apartment was dark except for the flickering light of the television set. It had been like that for days, maybe weeks; I didn't really know. The concept of time had lost much of its meaning. I could tell that time was passing from the vague fluctuations of dimness through the blinds, but what did it really matter? I suppose realizing that you're dead has that kind of effect.

Finding myself dead in my easy chair had created a rather substantial existential crisis for me. What do you do with that kind of information? I mean, there I was, dead and bloated with a bottle of whiskey hanging from my stiff fingers and the TV flickering on and on. What was I supposed to do now?

Besides sitting here and staring at myself, that is. How morbid.

It was overwhelming. Sometimes so much so that I would find myself back at my door thinking I had just come home to find an intruder in my apartment. It took me a while to realize that's what was going on. I had to come to grips with my death over and over again, but each realization was a little easier, and those events were becoming less frequent. It's hard to go through that kind of trauma, especially when you have to relive it every time you begin to break down.

The worst part, though, was that I couldn't remember dying. Once I was able to get over... I was going to say "get over my death," but I wasn't over that. I don't think you can get over that. I was stuck in this room, now, with a corpse and, even if it was my own corpse, it was gruesome. If I could have left, I would have, but I couldn't move anything or affect anything. Everything was as solid as if it had been cast in stone. I couldn't even pry the whiskey bottle from my cold, dead fingers and, believe me, I needed a drink! It was the only thing I could think about other than my corpse.

My corpse and trying to figure out how I'd died, which I couldn't remember. Once I was able to focus beyond re-living the moment of discovering my body, I could remember leaving home for the bar a few blocks away: I remembered getting out of bed and puttering around with making coffee and eating something vaguely identifiable as leftover Chinese food. Opening the blinds and quickly closing them again, all of them, because of how bright it was and how much the light hurt my eyes. I remembered the splitting headache of my hangover. I contemplated turning on the TV but decided against it because that, too, would be too bright, and I didn't want any noise at all. Then deciding that what I needed was a drink and fumbling into my clothes and going to the bar...

That was pretty much it.

I didn't remember coming home again. Or turning on the TV, though, from the low volume, I must have still been suffering from being hung over and from being drunk. I didn't remember getting the whiskey, either, and I was only just realizing that I must have been a raging alcoholic. A breakfast of beer on cereal was pretty common for me, after all. But I couldn't remember how I died and wondered if that had been it.

There was a noise at the door and, as it opened, someone said, "It's not even locked." Then, "Holy Hell! That's a smell I'm never going to forget," and the door closed again. A few minutes later -- or hours, how would I know? -- two men came in with Matilda, my neighbor from down the hall, my only friend in the building.

Matilda was saying, "Of course, I knew it wasn't locked, but I couldn't just come in. That would be breaking and entering."

One of the men said, "No, Ma'am, that's not breaking, and you didn't have to come in. If you'd just looked in the door."

"But no one answered when I knocked."

"Because he was dead."

"Hey, how long do you think he's been dead?"

"I'm not the M. E., how should I know?"

"I've been knocking on his door for over a week."

I couldn't keep track of it all. Maltilda was crying. The men were looking around the apartment using sticks or something to poke at my stuff, and one of them was taking pictures of my body. It was enough to make me sick, and I gagged and dry-heaved and found myself back at my door disoriented and confused. Matilda walked straight through me as one of the men escorted her back to her apartment, and that made me feel even sicker but, still, nothing came out.

Somewhere in all that was happening another man and some other men came in. The first one poked and prodded my body and said his guess was that I'd been dead somewhere around three weeks, and the other men loaded me onto a stretcher and carried my body away. I felt like that should have made me cry or, at least, feel sad or a sense of loss or something, but I was actually kind of glad. I was tired of looking at my corpse.

Finally, I was left alone in the room; all of the men were gone. The TV had been turned off. The bottle of whiskey was sitting on the kitchen counter, and I still couldn't pick it up.

It was only then that I realized that I was alone in the room. Alone in the room! Again! And I couldn't get out. I didn't want to be stuck in this apartment that I'd died in. Stuck alone in this one room for the rest of my... life? Death? Un-life? I didn't even know what to call whatever kind of existence this was.

I think I went kind of crazy for a while, beating on the door and walls and screaming for someone to let me out, someone to help me, someone to do anything.

Even ghosts, or whatever I was, can get exhausted, I guess, because I woke up later lying on the floor near the door. There were people with weird equipment walking around the room, and Matilda was with them. She kept telling them that she thought I was still there and that she was sure she had heard me yelling to be let out. Then, at some point, she turned in my direction and looked... well, she didn't quite look at me, but it was close enough, I guess, and said, "It's okay, John. You can go now."

I blinked and looked at the open door. I looked back at her and she nodded. The other people milled about the room with their beeping and blinking equipment and talked in low voices about cold spots and electrosomethingorothers. I looked back at the door, and Maltida said again, "You can go."

So I did.

I walked out the door and into the world, and it felt like I had never been out in the world before. Like I was seeing everything for the first time. Like I was being reborn. Reborn without my addiction and without my bills to pay or, even, a need to eat anything. I walked out into the world and for the first time in a long, long time... I was happy.

*****

If you enjoyed this story (all three parts, so make sure you check the previous two days for parts one and two if you missed them), which I have posted here for free, I would strongly encourage that you support the author (that's me!) by buying one of my other works. Seriously, it really helps.

Also, if you enjoyed this story, please share it with your friends. That's not a difficult thing to do. You can share it on Facebook or Twitter or, even, google+ (for now, at least)! The point is, spread the word.

Oh, and this won't be up forever. I'll leave it here a few weeks, but, then, it's coming down to be collected together and will no longer be free. So enjoy it now. I sincerely hope you did!

Some Body in My Chair

The apartment was dark as I entered it, which was not unusual, as I never left the lights on when I left. It's just that it seemed darker than usual, more foreboding, even with the television set on, its light serving only to deepen the shadows in the rest of the room, broken only by the flickering of people moving about on the screen. The low murmur of voices, not quite intelligible, gave the room the feeling of a hospital room with doctors and family whispering just outside of the rooms of dying patients. It sent a chill through me and turned my arms to goose flesh.

The television being on was a problem; I was sure I hadn't left it on, hadn't even been watching it before I'd left my apartment earlier in the evening; yet, on it was. A shiver began to work itself through my body as I watched the eerie light glinting off of the hard surfaces in the room. The surface of my little dining table. The glass in the picture frame on the bookshelf. The whisky bottle dangling from the fingers of the body in my easy chair... The shiver turned violent as I realized there was somebody in my easy chair.

What the fuck! There was somebody sitting in my easy chair!

I stood by the door trying to get my shaking under control and trying not to breathe. Trying to hear beyond the sounds and knocking of my body. The beating of my heart. The rushing of my blood. The ocean roaring in my ears. Trying not to give in to the vertigo I felt as the room spun around me.

I stood there, frozen, like a squirrel in front of a car... like a squirrel in front of a car... like a squirrel...

There was something about a squirrel. A squirrel leaping from my hands and dying. Unless I was the squirrel. Was I the squirrel? Was I the squirrel about to leap and die, or was I stuck in place and about to get run down? Was death my only option here?

I stared at the body in my chair and realized that his face was turned toward me and that one large eye was open and staring at me. I quit breathing. I had already been seen!

Dizziness began to overtake me, and real panic set in. Even more real panic. I was going to pass out right in front of the intruder in my house! I was just going to fall down and die for him, and there was nothing I was going to be able to do about it. Not literally die, of course, except in the way that he would be able to kill me without a fight when I fainted. As if I was any kind of fighter to begin with.

Can you black out while standing up? I don't know if that's possible, but I think I did. All I know is that time passed, some quantity of time that I'm unaware of but enough of it that I knew that time had passed. Time had passed and the person in the chair hadn't moved. At all. Not even blinked, from what I could tell. At least, once I came back to my senses and continued to stare at the intruder, he never blinked. And his mouth was slightly ajar, chin slack, and he never closed his mouth. His tongue must have been completely dry; I had a sympathetic gush of saliva at the thought.

Was he asleep with his eye open? Because I realized, soon, that the eye wasn't looking at me. It was just staring... at I don't know what. It was flat and dull and as unmoving as the body. I felt drawn to it and, without really meaning to, took a step toward it.

There was a smell in the air, a stench. Or, at least, I imagined there was. Dead bodies are supposed to stink, right? But I don't know if there was anything I could smell or not. Even once I found myself standing over the body, the smell may have just been the result of my revulsion. My revulsion at having someone break into my apartment and die in my chair while drinking my whiskey. How sick is that?

The body was already bloated... Wait, how long did it take a body to become bloated? I don't think it's at all possible that there would have been time for that. I wasn't gone all that long. Had someone broken into my place for the purpose of dumping a bloated corpse? Who would do something like that? I felt sick...

But I kept staring at the dead thing in my chair, the t-shirt spread too tightly over the now expansive belly, the taut skin, ...the empty eyes. A chill spread through my body as I began to realize the person in the chair, the ex-person in the chair, seemed familiar. Very familiar.
The body in the chair... was me.

Someone in My Chair

The apartment was dark as I entered, which was not unusual, as I never left the lights on when I left. It's just that it seemed darker than usual, but, perhaps, that was because the television was on, the sound turned down to a vague hum, and the dim light from the screen highlighted the darkness in the rest of the room, filling it with weird shadows and flickering lights.

The television was the problem. I was sure I hadn't left it on. I hadn't even been watching TV before I left, but, yet, there it was, its pale light glinting off of the hard surfaces in the room. Glinting off the whiskey bottle dangling from the hand of the man sitting in my easy chair...

There was someone sitting in my easy chair! What the fuck?

I stood silently by the door, not moving. Not breathing. Trying to still the sudden slamming of my heart in my chest through force of will. The pulsing of the blood in my ears and the hammering of my heart drowned out all other sound and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if, maybe, an earthquake hadn't started while I was standing there. The room seemed unstable enough for it.

But, no, it was me. My world spinning. Someone in my home, sitting in my chair, drinking my liquor. I was frozen in indecision, not unlike a squirrel in front of an oncoming car.

I held a squirrel once. It was injured, and I picked it up with thoughts of helping it. I'm not sure what I thought I would do to help it since I don't know the first thing about first aid or medicine, especially to do with animals, or anything of the sort, but that's what I had thought. Its little heart pelted my hand with tiny blows as I picked it up to carry it up to my apartment. I spoke softly to it hoping to soothe it, but I could tell it was freaking out. As I was going up the stairs to my building, without warning, it sprang from my hand and bounced down the stairs. I retrieved it quickly but, by the time I had gotten up to the door, it was dead.

I felt like that squirrel, gripped by some strange hand holding a whiskey bottle. Frozen but ready to leap. If only I knew where to leap. To the phone? Could I make it to the phone and dial 9-1-1 before the man reacted to my presence? What if he had a weapon? Not that that would matter; I wasn't a fighter. I wasn't really a lover, either, but I certainly wasn't a fighter.

Should I back out the door? Matilda was just a few doors down. I could use her phone. But it was Wednesday... She wouldn't be home. Wednesday was bingo night. Leave it to me to have an intruder on the one night during the week when my one friend in the building wasn't home. Which left me wondering why I had never bothered to make any other friends in the building. Not that I really had to wonder. I knew what kind of person I was, the kind who hung out in bars with people who were your friends as long as you were buying the drinks. People whose names I couldn't remember from one night to the next. And who couldn't remember mine.

Matilda was only my friend because she'd taken it upon herself to befriend me, bringing me actual food for dinner rather than allowing me to subsist on an all alcohol diet. In exchange I did the occasional chore for her, like carrying her trash down to the bin or...

Well, it didn't matter. She wasn't home, and my only other option was to go banging door to door, and I wasn't going to do that. Not only wasn't I going to do that but doing that might arouse the intruder from all the noise, so I certainly wasn't going to do that. If only pay phones were still a thing! But I couldn't think of the last place I'd even seen one...

Other than the bar a couple blocks over, the bar I spent most of my evenings in. They still had a pay phone! It was a pretty far way to go to call the cops on an intruder in my apartment when I was standing in the door to my apartment, but I didn't see what other option I might have. Which, I suppose, serves me right for never bothering to get a cell phone. Which I didn't need. Since I never called anyone.

Really, I just hadn't seen the need after my partner died three years ago. He was the social one. The one who liked to have friends over and who, evidently, maintained all of our connections. Right up until he got really sick and people quit coming around. Despite all of the talk, it seemed people still had that same 80s fear of AIDS and, yes, people still die of it. Excuse me, people still die of complications caused by AIDS. Why bother with a cell phone; I didn't want to talk to any of those people.

A low moan drifted up from somewhere in the vicinity of my chair -- my chair! -- and I was reminded of what I needed the phone for in the first place. Stupid stupid to let my mind wander around like that with an intruder sitting in my chair not much farther away than spitting distance from me. What was wrong with me? I hadn't had that much to drink. I hadn't even needed a ride home from the bar..

The pounding of my heart in my ears was making it hard to think. I just needed to get away but, when I reached for the door so that I could ease back out, I bumped it closed instead. The noise was deafening. Or may as well have been. It was enough to attract the attention of the intruder, and his head slowly turned toward me.

You'd probably expect that someone intruding in someone else's house would have a stronger reaction than to slowly turn one's head at an unexpected noise, but he wasn't just holding the whiskey bottle, it seemed. The bottle was nearly empty. Not that I really noticed that at the time. At the time, I was frantically trying to get out the door of my own house. That's somewhat more difficult to do when you're trying to move against the opening of the door.

It didn't help that I was being stared at by a bleary, bloodshot, yellow eye.

Maybe there was another moan. Maybe it was me trying not to scream. Maybe it was the squeaking of the chair. I couldn't tell over the pounding of my heart and the scrape of the door as I wrenched it open. Then I was gone. I don't even know if I shut the door behind me or not. Not that it mattered since there was already someone in my apartment. At that moment, I didn't care. I just wanted away. What to do about the person in my chair was a problem for some other time.

world war four (a book review post)

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Briane Pagel's work. He has a contemplative style of writing that really works for me. Generally speaking, his stories deal with some deeper question, some "what if?" that the story is addressing. So, like, in his excellent novel, Codes, the question is something like, "What if people were like computer "codes" that could be copied?" That's a good book, by the way, you should go read it.

Which is not to imply that most stories don't begin with some kind of "what if?" by the author, but Pagel's questions, or his answers, at least, tend to have a philosophical bent to them. So Codes is more about the effect on a person finding out he's a copy rather than a runaway adventure story about clones. I suppose it's the way he answers his questions that set him apart from most authors.

Which brings us to world war four, Pagel's most recent collection of short stories. I already tend to have a contentious relationship with short stories, and these are no different in that respect.

I think my main issue is that the two main stories (or what felt like to me to be the two main stories), including the title story, "worldwarfour," felt incomplete to me. This is actually a very common response I have to short stories, that they're too short. Like there should have been more there but, for whatever reason, the author just didn't finish it or fill it out enough or got bored. Something. That's how I felt with "worldwarfour" and "if i'd been in charge of einstein's brain."

And, with both of those stories, I couldn't decide what they were about, what the question was that Pagel was exploring. That said, I did really like what was there of "worldwarfour." It felt very much like a -- I'm going to guess 10-year-old (because either I've forgotten or it was never said) -- boy wandering in the woods while playing a game with his friends. Pagel captured a stream-of-consciousness that really feels right. It's just that the story has no real conclusion, and I was left wondering if, maybe, some of the story got left out of the book.

The other three stories are good, but I wouldn't say they are great. "zanzibar" both feels complete and incomplete at the same time. Like the necessary story is there, but it's not fleshed out enough. Except that it is enough to tell the story it's telling, just probably doesn't answer the questions it will generate. Sometimes, I find this to be a very good quality in storytelling, but I wasn't quite satisfied with it here. (But, then, that might just be related to my general dissatisfaction with the world in general, right now. It's hard to say.)

"7 pigs" and "pete & repeat went out in a boat," I both quite liked, but they're... oh, I'll say that they're less serious stories, which isn't quite right, because they're not, but they're handled in a less serious manner, I suppose.

So what I would say here is this:
If you're a fan of Pagel's work, you should read this one. It doesn't require a huge time investment, and there is some good stuff in it. However, if you haven't read Pagel before, go get Codes; it's a better introduction to his work, and it's good stuff.

Confusing the Message for the Medium

Back in the 1950s, Ray Bradbury wrote a little short story called "A Sound of Thunder." It's the one about the dudes going back in time to hunt dinosaurs, and you should already know it. If you don't, go read it now before I spoil it. Look, it's a short story, it won't take you that long.

Anyway, the dudes are sent back in time to hunt dinosaurs. There are all of these precautions set up to keep them from disrupting the time line, and they are supposed to follow them explicitly. However, at one point, one of the dudes steps off of the designated path and, when he picks up his foot, finds he has crushed a butterfly. But it's just a butterfly, right? You'd like to think that but, when they return to their own time, they find that everything has changed.

I know! Trippy, right! That's, like, SO deep and meaningful and shit! The dude stepped on a butterfly and changed, like, EVERYTHING! Duuude! And only those dudes knew anything had changed! That's so weird, right! Duuude!

Oh, like, dude! maybe they could go back in time again to before the one dude killed the butterfly and stop him from stepping on the butterfly and fix everything. That's so trippy! Like, duuude!

The problem, though, is that the story is not about the time travel or that everyone in the group who had traveled had kept their original memories intact. That's just the medium to deliver the message, the message that even little things can have huge consequences.

However, this idea has become a staple in science fiction and time travel stories, the idea that the person who travels in time can change the past and yet retain their memories unchanged. It's bullshit, and it wasn't Bradbury's point and, frankly, I'm sick and tired of seeing it done, because it's one of the most ridiculous logical fallacies in science fiction. Probably more than anything else, it is the thing that makes me hate time travel stories, and I can almost say that unilaterally because virtually every time travel story out there uses this idea.

Probably, right about now, I'm stepping on some people's toes, because time travel stories are very popular, and people seem to love this crap.

But here's the other thing I hate about time travel stories and, for this, I'm going to use an example...

Recently, I've been watching The Flash with my daughter. (The boys have no interest in the DC TV shows (and for good reason!).) Because we watch everything after the fact, we're working our way through season two, right now. Now, as a character, I like the Flash -- If I could have a super power, it would be super speed. -- but I haven't much liked this version of the Flash. Sorry, the character in this show is NOT Barry Allen. However, it's been okay enough to watch with my daughter because she does like it. (She prefers Marvel, but she can't watch the Marvel TV shows, yet.)

It has been "okay enough" right up until we got to the episode "Flash Back." They've already done a few time travel episodes, but those were episodes -- see if you can follow this -- where time travel happened but were not about the time travel; "Flash Back" is about the time travel. And it turned a show which was "okay enough" into a show I am currently hating for its blatant and utter stupidity.

So let's break this down:
1. Barry Allen is supposed to be a brilliant scientist. To say that another way, he's incredibly smart.
2. Barry Allen already went back in time to the murder of his mother, and he refrained from saving her, something he desperately wanted to do, because of the danger of changing the past.
3. In "Flash Back," before Barry leaves for the past, they give him that whole speech, "Don't change anything, because you will be the only one who remembers how things are actually supposed to be."

So...
1. Barry is super smart, so he should know better than to tamper with the things that have already happened.
2. If Barry could withstand the temptation to save his mother, he should be able to withstand any other temptations about changing the past.
3. Bullshit!

But...
Of course, Barry can't resist and purposefully affects the past at least three times in the episode, not to mention all of the accidental/unforeseen changes.
Wait a minute...
Knowing the danger of messing with the past, Barry goes ahead and purposefully makes alterations to the timeline for which he cannot know the ramifications.
But the writers expect us to believe that
1. Barry is smart.
2. Barry would succumb to the temptation of fiddling when he didn't save his mother.

This is just... bad writing. Bad writing. Horrible, stupid writing. And it's the kind of thing that makes me hate more than 90% of time travel in popular culture. Not to mention that this particular example of it undermines the entire Flash TV series. We can now no longer trust anything in the show because the writers can just do whatever the fuck they want at any given moment and blame it on Barry having changed things in the past.

And the bigger problem?
Once you've established that your hero can time travel, you can't have him not do it without that being equally as stupid as having the time travel. Either way, the show can't move forward, now, without being dumb.

Maybe I should go back in time and explain to Bradbury the horror he is going to unleash on the world with his one little short story.

"Herbert West: Reanimator" (a book review post)

This is by far the longest piece by Lovecraft that I've read so far. Not because I'm avoiding his longer works but because, after reading several of his short stories, I decided to read his works in the order in which he wrote them. I don't know; I guess I just wanted to see the evolution of his writing.

It is in some ways disingenuous to say that this is a longer work. It is in actuality six short stories about the same two characters, Herbert West and his narrator assistant. Each story begins with a somewhat distracting recap of events which is meant to string the events of each episode together into a coherent whole. This is only partially successful as there is no need to have read any of the stories to be able to read any of the other stories except for the last one, "The Tomb-Legions," which requires that you have read all of the other pieces.

I have to say that this... I don't know, let's call it an experiment... was unsuccessful. Lovecraft called the story a parody of Frankenstein, but I don't think it succeeds even at that. It's too clumsy, both copying the novel and being unrelated to it at the same time. And, in the end, Lovecraft pulls in some of his unexplainable otherworldly esoterica to draw the story to an unsatisfying conclusion which is so unrelated to anything in Frankenstein that it manages to undermine any claim that this is a parody.
 It turns it into a poor attempt at stealing this particular story idea, that of bringing the dead back to life.

Lovecraft has some stylistic choices which specifically don't work in Herbert West:
1. Lovecraft is a "teller," not a "show-er." This robs his stories of immediacy and works against them being true horror. They might leave you feeling creepy, but it's difficult to ever feel any real fear for the characters since everything is told from some far removed point to the actual action.
2. He almost never uses dialogue, resorting, instead, to just telling us what was talked about. This follows point 1.
3. He cheats on descriptions (CONSTANTLY!) by telling us it's too unspeakable for words. Sorry, as a pattern (which it is), that's just deficient writing skills. Every once in a while, that can work to heighten just how horrible something is, but, when that's your go-to descriptive phrase, it shows that you just can't come up with anything.

The above points don't cause problems in any individual short story, but they cause longer works to drag and become uninteresting. Thankfully, even as a longer work, Herbert West wasn't all that long, and I was able to finish it, but I was glad when I did. I kept thinking as I was reading, "Geez! Just get to the point!" Unfortunately, the point wasn't really worth getting to.

Angels Unbound: Asbeel (an a-to-z post)

So... Here we are at A-to-Z 2016. As with every year that I've done this, I'm behind schedule, and that was after taking last year off so that I would be ready for this year! Well, you know about plans and life and everything that means, I'm sure.

My general tendency would be to explain all about the genesis of all of this -- and I want to! -- but, honestly, I just don't have time, right now, to do that. Maybe I'll get to it later in the month? Or, more likely, it will end up in an author's note somewhere. Anyway...

Here's a summary just so you'll know what you're getting:

Angels Unbound is a sequence of short stories about -- you guessed it! -- Angels.There's an Angel for each letter of the alphabet, and each story is self-contained, meaning that it can be read on its own. However, as with everything I do, it's more complicated than that. There are some plot lines that run through multiple stories. Because I am presenting them alphabetically, they are not being told linearly, so, if you read them all, expect there to be some hopping around. But, then, that's why each story is self-contained.

The catch is that not all of the stories are written, yet. In fact, most of them aren't written yet. On those days, I will have a short character blurb for the Angel whose story has not yet been told. On days like today, when there is a story, there will be a link to that story, and, yea!, it will be FREE! If I feel inspired, there might be some blurb about that Angel's character, too, but not today. It's too spoilery. No, I can't even tell you what Asbeel's name means without giving something away.

Oh, before I give you the link, these stories, many of them, at any rate, probably most, today's for sure, are very adult in nature. Seriously. There's sex. Explicit. I'm just warning you, okay. This is not one to get for your kids. I'm saying that because my other stuff (House, Spinner, Tea Kettle) has all been stuff you could give to the kids. Not this.

Okay, are we clear on that? Good.

With that said, go pick up "Asbeel"! As I said, today, it's FREE! You can't really beat FREE!

Peer Editing (or Teaching Kids To Fail) (an IWSG post)

Back around the beginning of December, my younger son had his first fiction writing assignment in his freshman English class. As I've mentioned before, my son is an excellent writer. He is so far beyond where I was at his age, there's no way to make a good comparison. The story he wrote is very good, and I will be making it available at some point. It was so good, in fact, that his teacher emailed me to let me know how good it is, so good that she caused a disruption during class while reading it. Because she was laughing her ass off.
[heh heh I said "ass."]

All of that is well and good. The issue came after they turned in the first draft. After the first draft came the peer editing process. I have never been fond of peer editing; my oldest had to do a lot of this when he was in high school, but he was the one that everyone wanted to edit their papers. [Do you see a trend here?] He would mention it every now and then, but it was never an issue for him. However, what happened with my younger son is an excellent example of why peer editing should never be used. Not in school and, well, not anywhere.

So my son wrote his story and turned it in, then it was passed through the hands of several of his classmates for editing. It came back with tons of corrections. I mean  the paper was all marked up. And this caused a problem.

See, my son was pretty sure he didn't have any errors, even though he hadn't given it to me to proof before he turned it in. His marked up paper filled him with doubt. It made him question what he knew.

He brought it home and gave it to me and told me, "I didn't think I had any mistakes but, now, I don't know."  He asked me some specific questions about punctuation, because more than one person had made the same comma "correction." One person accused him of using too many "run on" and "long" sentences, because, the person said, sentences should be short. I agreed to look the story over for him so that he would know which "corrections" to respond to.

As it turned out, the number of corrections he needed to respond to was... zero. ZERO. Every correction made to his story was incorrect. I told him to ignore them all and turn the final draft in exactly as it had been. His grade was 50/50 turning in the paper as it had been before his peers got a hold of it. His teacher wrote "flawless" along with the grade.

There are a few things here that need to be pointed out:
1. My son knew what he was doing. He knew he knew what he was doing. But, still, when his paper came back from his peers, it filled him with doubt about what he knew he knew. That's not a good thing. If my son, who is very competent, doubted himself, how do you think other students who are not very competent responded?
2. In relation to point 1, this kind of "editing" can cause students to unlearn things that are correct. It can convince them that they were incorrect about things which were actually correct and cause them to change to some incorrect method, like putting all the commas after the conjunction in a sentence rather than before it (a very common "correction" on my son's story).
3. Every time a student makes an incorrect "correction" on someone else's paper, it reinforces that incorrect behavior. Each time that student moves the comma to the wrong place, it ingrains that process just a little deeper. Kind of like muscle memory. It's much more difficult to re-learn something like that once you've been doing it a lot rather than just learning it correctly the first time. Don't give students a chance to reinforce bad grammar/punctuation habits; they make enough of those on their own.

The whole peer editing process being used in schools is a bad joke, and teachers should quit telling it.

I want to point out that the critique partner process is the same thing as peer editing. Almost always, the assertion, "I have great critique partners," means, "My peer editors add mistakes to my manuscript!" What makes me say this? Well, the fact that so many indie authors who use CPs to help them edit their books send their works out full of grammar and punctuation lice. Yeah, lice, because that's what it's like. One person's mistakes jumping over to some other person's manuscript because neither person is competent with grammar.

Sorry, it's just the truth.

More heads do NOT result in a better product. They result in a gradual degradation of your first product as you incorporate everyone else's mistakes into your manuscript. Basically, a grammar lice outbreak.

Look. I get it. Editing is tough. Good editing is even more tough, and it's difficult to find at a reasonable price. Beyond that, most of the editors out there aren't any better than having a CP. Too many of them are "editing" because they read a lot. Seriously. I have seen so many people (book bloggers, especially) who, because they find "mistakes" in the indie books they are reading, think that makes them qualified to be an editor. It does not.

So what do you do, then?

There's not really a good answer to that other than to find ONE person who is better at copy-editing than you and trust that one person with your manuscript. At least, that way, you only have the potential for one person's errors in your final product. Or, maybe, you'll find someone really good, and it will end up "flawless" like my son's short story. (If you want, I'll ask him if he's taking anyone, right now.)

Actually, ideally, you would set to work learning grammar and punctuation yourself and develop your own style with it that fits your writing. That's what's most important, especially if you're an indie author. Even if not all of the grammar and punctuation isn't technically correct, if the style fits you're writing, it doesn't matter.

can you imagine what it would be like if e e cummings had followed the rules?

his style was what defined him

however, i'm sure he knew the rules even though he didn't follow them

why do i know that?

because he broke the rule consistently in the same way

All of that to say:

Stop submitting your work to your "peers." By the definition of peers, these are people who are no more qualified than you to do the job that you are asking of them. Learn the rules for yourself, then you can know how and when to break them.

Revisiting the Abandoned

As some of you will know (maybe most of you?), back in April, I did Abandoned Places as my A-to-Z theme. Alex wanted to know more about what went into that whole thing: where the idea came from, how I found the places, what kind of research was involved; so he asked me a bunch of questions about it. Because I'm (mostly) a nice guy (depending upon what day of the week it is (or whether you're asking my kids)), I answered them. You can see the whole thing over at the Blogging from A to Z Challenge blog, so you should probably hop over there and read that.

* * *

A while back I announced that I have a new thing coming out... um... I want to say soon, but my kids and back-to-school have completely derailed my process these past few weeks and, although I have finished writing it, it is mostly still only written in pen. None of which is the important part. As I said back when I announced this, I'm looking for a backup short story to go along with it. While I've had a few people express interest, I've had no one give me a firm commitment, as in "Hey! I have something written, and I would love for it to appear with your story!" So... If you have something written and you'd like for it to appear at the back of my vague and undescribed story, let me know. [If you're interested, I will tell you what the project is, but, otherwise, it's a secret until it's ready to go.

* * *

Speaking of new things, the new issue, the August issue, of Indie Writers Monthly is out!

There's tons of good stuff in each issue. Unless you're actually trying to weigh it, in which case, you'll find it's a bit hard to grasp being virtual and all that. My article in this issue is all about editing and softball. You should definitely check it out!

* * *

Just a reminder: My two sons have started up their own blog. It's called Aim for the Cat! Yes, there is a reference involved; no, I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm assuming one of them will get around to explaining it at some point, but, hey, they are teenagers, so who can tell? Also, who can tell what they're going to talk about? So far the posts have been movie reviews, reflections on the state of the universe (or something like that), and Spore. If you don't know what Spore is, I suppose you'll just have to go over and find out. Oh, and while you're there, leave them an encouraging word or three.

* * *

And the last thing...

Well, I don't even know where to begin with the last thing. Most of you, being the people of the Internet that you are, will have heard or seen that Robin Williams is dead. I'm not one to get gushy over celebrities, but a few of them have been part of things (usually movies) that have been significant in my life. If you click my "Of Significance..." tab at the top of the page, you'll see that Dead Poets Society 

is (and has been) listed as one of my pieces of significance. That movie had a profound impact on me, and I have a sense of loss with passing of Williams. It's also very saddening that he had no one around him that could reach out and help.

I'm going to leave it at that.

"Let Down Your Hair"

Just a short post today.

Recently I mentioned that I joined up with a group that would be posting short stories on the Out of Print blog. My short story, "Let Down Your Hair," is up this week. Those of you who have read The House on the Corner may recognize it from the end of the book where I stuck it in (it will be coming out of the book, though, when I release the revised edition, in favor of a story written by someone else (see yesterday's post)). If you haven't read House, this little 1200 word story will give you a tiny taste of the theme of the book. Imagination. Pop on over and check it out, and follow that blog while you're there. I feel fairly confident in saying that there should be some interesting stories coming up in the future.

The Big 30-0! and the Great Chocolate Contest!

So... something happened yesterday that I wasn't paying attention to. The problem with this is that I was paying attention to paying attention to it, because I wanted to do something special for it. BUT I thought had more drafts in my draft folder than I actually did, so I didn't realize until after the fact that I had posted my 300th post! In less than two years, which is much better than I thought I would be doing. But there it is! 300 published posts (301 with this one) and a handful of drafts of things in progress (not to mention my handwritten notes for post ideas that got packed away when we moved that I still haven't located). I'm not really sure why 300 seems to be a significant number to me, but it does. I'm think I won't do another one of these until I get to 501, and if anyone gets the reference, please let me know. The 501 is significant.
[Yes, I know that's not much to go on, but it will separate the men from the boys, metaphorically speaking.]

Stepping to the side for a moment, I mentioned recently that I had discovered the best chocolate ever. And I have! This stuff is the BEST chocolate in the world! At least, it's the best chocolate that I've ever tasted, and that's saying something. No, I don't know what it's saying, but I'm sure it is. Look, I like to taste things (be nice!)... I like to try new foods (is that better?), so, when I get the chance, chocolate is one of the things I like to sample. I've tried lots of different types of chocolates over the years, and this stuff is by far the best ever. It's all hand made right here in a store not all that far from my house. The stuff is divine.

Back when I mentioned that I'd discovered this chocolate, I also said that I would try to think of a contest for which the chocolate could be the prize, well, I've done that. Yep, in honor of 300 posts, and in honor of my birthday, which is coming up, and in honor of the birthday of the first edition of The House on the Corner,

which, quite by accident, turns two on my birthday (the one pictured is the 2nd edition, but that's the one that's available), I have a contest!

To some extent, this contest is a little not fair, but it's my contest, and I AM going to be giving away the best chocolate in the ENTIRE world, so, oh, well, you will just have to deal with it.

So here's the deal:
I have been thinking for a while that it would be fun to do a collection of short stories based on The House on the Corner and the Imagination Room. Those of you that have read the book will understand how that can work. I actually have two already: one that I wrote that is included at the end of the book called "Let Down Your Hair" and one that my son wrote called "Into the Trench" that is included in Charter Shorts. There's so much room for more stories there, though, and I just don't have time, right now, to write any, so, hey, why not get some other people to do that work for me, right? It will be kind of like Tom Sawyer convincing his friends to pay him to do his chores.

And here's how it works:
Write a short story based on a trip in the Imagination Room from The House on the Corner. Submit it to me by February 6, 2013. I'll pick the best one based almost completely on, just, which one I like the best, although I may have my kids help with the choosing if I can't decide. The author of the story I pick as "the best" will win a box of the GREATEST CHOCOLATE in the world. And, maybe, another special prize as well, but I'm not completely certain about the second one yet (but I'll let you know as soon as I am). There may even be more than one prize if there are multiple entries that I think are just awesome. It would be really nice if I had your permission to include your story in a special collection of House short stories as well. Oh, and just to be clear, I want short stories, so that would make your cutoff point 7500 words (though I'm not gonna quibble too much if it goes longer than that (although it would be nice if they were under 10,000 words)).

Yes, I do realize that you have to have read The House on the Corner to be able to enter this, so, if you haven't, you ought to get on that, don't you think? And, no, this is not really a sneaky way to get more sales or reviews or anything like that, although both would be nice. I just think, since quite a few of you (at least 3 or 4), have read it, that this will be a lot of fun. Assuming people actually submit stories. You can even post the stories on your blogs once you write them, and I'll link over to them.
One other note, because so many of my students at school have read the book, I'm gonna open the contest to my creative writing class, too, so you better bring your best, because some of those kids can really write!

Well, there you have it. I hope some of you decide to take part and that this is a fun idea for more than just me. If I'm wrong about that, please let me know. Otherwise, get to writing!

Flash (in the pan) Fiction

Flash fiction is not one of my favorite forms of writing. In fact, you could say that I kind of hate it. I dislike it so much that I've had to restart this post four times for being much too harsh. It's not really the fault of the flash fiction, either; it's those people that write flash fiction. No, not you that have written a short story or three that happen to fall into the "flash fiction" range, but those people that just love "flash fiction" because it's so unique and forces you to do so much with so little and all of that other pretentious hogwash.

And it is. Pretentious. And hogwash.

It's especially pretentious since most (almost all) of what those people write when they're doing all of their flash fiction crap is crap. C. R. A. P.

Here's something I read recently that kind of illustrates the point. It was someone talking about the "grand tradition" of flash fiction and how it goes back decades and decades. Um... no... the term "flash fiction" didn't appear until the early 90's, so it, as a thing, certainly wasn't a thing before that. Which is not to say that short stories under 1000 words didn't exist before then, because they did, and they, at various points, had various other names. But, sometimes, when things are given a "name," they become a "thing," and "flash fiction" has only been a "thing" for two decades (which is, technically, decades, but it's hardly "decades"), and it's only been a "real thing" for, maybe, the last decade or so.

But that's kind of the thing, they are JUST short stories. In fact, on the scale of literary items, so to speak, "flash fiction" doesn't even exist. You have:
short stories -- less than 7500 words
novelettes -- 7500 - 17,500 words
novellas -- 17,500 - 40,000 words
novels -- 40,000+ words
Yeah, I did research on this stuff for my creative class, and that's really the generally accepted breakdown. Something close to that, anyway. No one even mentions flash fiction in terms of publication. Generally speaking, if a magazine (or whoever) wants something that would fall into the "flash fiction" category, they ask for SHORT STORIES at around the 1000 word length.

Yeah, I know a lot of you are probably thinking I'm getting all worked up over nothing, and I can see that, but let me give you a similar example. I thought about speech as a major when I was in college, so I took the requisite intro to speech class. WOW! Now there was a class that was trying too hard. You think psychology tries hard to be recognized as a science, try taking a speech class. One of the things we learned early on is that there are specific "scientific" names for the distances people stand away from you when you talk to them. (and I am completely making these names up, because I don't remember (nor do I care to remember) what the actual names are) So, if someone is standing within 2" of you, he is in your "C" zone. If he is 2-4" away, he is in your "R" zone. If he's 4-8" away, he's in your "A" zone, and, if he's 8-12" away, he's in your "P" zone. Yes, because all of that, also, is CRAP. While it's true that how close to you someone stands is important, because it affects different people in different ways, there are also cultural and personal distinctions about  this stuff, so it's NOT THE SAME for everyone, so giving these arbitrary distances names was just a way to sound all sciency about it, and it didn't mean anything.

And that's how I feel about "flash fiction."

Oh, and I decided not major in speech, because, after that class, I figured it was just going to be a waste of time. Speech, as a major, is like trying to dress a pig in a dress and pass it off as your prom date.

>sigh<

So... flash fiction just tries too hard. It does. It's trying hard to be something more than just a short story, and, the truth is, it is just a short story. Except, mostly, they're very poorly written short stories.
And here's why:

1. Frequently, because the author is trying to stuff, say, a 5000 word story into an artificial 1000 word format, he has to rely on lots of exposition (or Telling) to impart enough of the story to make it make sense, so what we end up with is 500-700 words of the author telling us the background and only a few hundred words of the actual action of the story (the Showing). It's very unsatisfying, and I'm always left feeling like the author should have just written another few thousand words so that we could actually experience more of the story as story rather than as "historical" prologue.

Mostly, people should just write the story that needs to be told without worrying about how long or short it is. Shorter, contrary to popular belief, is not better, as I'm continually telling the kids in my creative writing class, who always want to get away with shorter, and I have to tell them to go back and expand expand expand. Show me the action; don't just tell me what happened. Flash fiction writers need to take this lesson to heart. If half of your flash fiction is Telling, you're writing in the wrong format. Period.

2. I suppose because the format is so short, authors of flash fiction often feel like they need to work in some kind of twist ending. Something unexpected to give us a shock at the end. These things sort of give flash fiction a joke-like quality, like they need some kind of punch line. The twists often feel forced and unnatural, too, which makes them bad jokes. I've not read a single piece of flash fiction with a twist at the end that was worth reading. Especially when the twist is accomplished through some gruesome act for no other reason than to be shocking.

I truly hope this fad of flash fiction passes relatively quickly, because it's reducing story telling to the same level that free verse reduced poetry, which is garbage. None of that is to say there aren't good examples out there, but it's not something just anyone can do with any skill. Learn how to tell a story and use as many words as you need to tell that story. If it happens to fall under 1000 words, great, but, if not, don't force it. It's pretty much the same as cutting off your toes to get your foot into a smaller shoe.

Unexpected Applause: Chasing the Sandman

Way back at the beginning of the year, I did a review on a book by the guys over at A Beer for the Shower. It's a good book, so you should all click the link, read the review, and go buy the book. But that's not what we're here to talk about today.

Today, we're here to talk about the first solo release of the Brandon half of the Beer team, Chasing the Sandman

This is a collection of short stories that Brandon has written over the years and finally collected into one place. As such, I mean, as such that it is short stories, I should probably say right here at the beginning that I'm not the biggest fan of short stories. Which is not to say that there have not been some that I've really enjoyed or even some that have been very influential in my life, but, mostly, I just feel like there's not enough to them, so I tend to avoid short story collections. It's also why, I suppose, that I don't really write short stories either. What I think is going to be a short story when I start out always becomes something bigger than that (The Evil That Men Do is a good example).

Now that everyone is expecting me to trash the book, let's get to the technicals. As is generally the case with independently published books, this one could have used an editor; however, it wasn't too bad. Other than  the repeated issue with the comma after the conjunction with an independent clause following (my current peeve), there were no consistent errors. Just the occasional typo and left out word. All in all, it's a pretty good job that would say is a B. If not for that one comma thing, I'd say a B+ to an A-, but, then, there's the comma thing. That's probably a bigger issue for me than, well, pretty much everyone else, though (and I have a whole post about commas coming up; won't that be fun!).

But let's look at the book itself. Great title, right? I think it's a great title. My only issue with it is that it didn't seem to have any relation to the stories within the book. Often, with a collection like this as with the title of an album, the title will have something to do with a theme for the stories or with one story  in particular. There are no stories with the same title nor is the line used anywhere, so, unless I missed the theme, it's just a cool title. I'm not sure how I feel about that, although I'm sure it won't bother a lot of people. That's probably just me and my hang up with titles, but you can blame that on Samuel Delaney.

Jumping into the book, though, there is a lot of good to be said about it. Most of the stories are quite good with a twist that you can see coming but can't quite figure out. It makes them interesting in a way that most things of this genre are not. In fact, I'd love to go through them individually, but I don't think I could say anything of substance about them that wouldn't give away more than you'd want to know, so I'm not going to do that.

I will say that the first story hooked me immediately, for reasons I can't say, and kept me going even though... well, see, I can't say that, either. What I can say is that "Graveyard Shift" is a freaky story even though I think it probably shouldn't be, and that says a lot for the author. It made my skin crawl, and I'm not even afraid of... yeah, see, I can't say that.

"Runaway Train" is unusual and sad. Sort of a unique perspective.

"Spirit House" is great even though I saw where it was going. But, see, it's one of those that I really wanted to be longer. I felt stifled by the shortness of it.

"Spirit of Christmas" is one where you think you know what's going to happen but the author pulls one over on you. You know there must be some twist coming, but you just can't figure out what it could be, and, then, when it happens, you smack your forehead. Brilliant!

Amidst all the horror slips "Into the Deep," a great little sci-fi piece that hints at a lot more. There's a bigger story there, but the one that's told is a good one.

"Seeking Shade" is great. I probably have a particular fondness for it due it's shadowy theme. There are some interesting things going on there and more to be told, I'm sure.

And I loved "1st Appearance"! The comic book thing is right up my alley and is the kind of thing any comic nerd dreams about. Okay, well, probably the second thing any comic nerd dreams about, but we can't talk about the first one in polite company. Okay, so, really, the main thing any comic nerd dreams about is getting super powers, but if you leave that one off the list... Just forget that I'm talking. Except keep reading.

All of that aside, the story I liked most, "Spilled Ink," was also the one I was frustrated with. It's a great example of what I think of as a story that's too short. It's a great idea and well written, except the author makes a couple leaps of logic that I have to assume were made to the story an acceptable length, except that I would much rather that it be twice as long or three times as long to get all the story in there rather than have it be whittled down. So I think it's a great story, but it's definitely too short.

As is the last story, "Denatured," although I didn't like that one as much. However, I might have liked it a lot more if it didn't fee so sparse. The ironic thing about that is that I think "Spilled Ink" and "Denatured" are the longest stories in the collection.

With 21 shorts, there were only a few that I didn't care for at all, and, I think, that's saying something. Generally speaking, for me, in a collection like this, I'd only be finding a few a actually liked, and I'd be dismissing the rest as inconsequential, but this whole collection, for the most part, really kept me going.

If you like horror and suspense, this is definitely something you should check out. You can see hints of the humor and wording from The Missing Link in here, and that, to me, is very interesting. Interesting in that I can see how the Brandon half of Beer works with the Bryan half to make their stuff work. But, again, that's probably just me. Overall, I'd give the collection a good B hedging to the higher side of the B. The stories are definitely above average and do a good job of defying expectations. You go read it and let me know which ones you like best. That's kind of the most fun with short story collections anyway. Especially if you love one that I hated. Okay, so I didn't hate any of them, but, with 21 stories, there have to be a few on the lower end of the scale.

And remember to come back on Monday!
For the FREE! release of