Deleted Scenes from Secrets of the Weird

In honor of the one-year anniversary of the release of Secrets of the Weird, I thought it might be fun to post a couple of brief deleted scenes from the book. Enjoy...

Deleted Scene #1:

This would have taken place right at the beginning of Chapter Fourteen, just before Civilized Cannibals played their show at Club Club. In this brief exchange between Mace Akers and Steve London, there's some fun dialogue and setting description, but ultimately it was just slowing down the chapter as a whole, so away it went.

     Steve London inched his way toward Club Club’s infamously grotesque restroom. He looked like an animated skeleton doing the graveyard boogie. Frail old stickers and flyers on the Wheat Paste Wall attempted to escape from their positions. The pathway leading from the main hall of the club to the restroom was stickier than a rug weaved with freshly chewed gum. A few thoughtful and inspirational graffiti statements tattooed the restroom’s outer door:

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL 1-800-YOUR-MOM

VIV & THE VACCUUMS SUCK

LIBERACE IS GAY

JOANIE BLEW CHACHI CHARLES TOSSED BUDDY’S SALAD

      A strident flush roared behind the door, as if the whole city was about to be sucked into the Earth’s toilet. Moments later, Mace Akers burst through the door like a firefighter on the way to save a kitten. He lifted each arm and sniffed at his pits, confirmed they were acceptable for public interaction. A devious grin was smeared across his cinderblock face.

     “Is it safe to go in there?” Steve asked. Worry haunted his eyes.

     “Well,” Mace said, “it’s not my finest work, but I think you’ll still be impressed.”

     Steve froze, weighing out his options. He puffed on the remains of a clove cigarette as if it were providing him with oxygen. His pupils bounced around inside his eye sockets.

     “I used the last of the TP, too,” Mace said, already halfway across the club before Steve had a chance to make up his mind.

     “I think I can hold it just a little longer.”

Deleted Scene #2:

A very tiny cut from the fanzine interview with Civilized Cannibals. There's some funny stuff here, but I also realized Mace and Steve had already given Christopher a lot of grief about his previous relationship with Cypress, so it would have been a little redundant.

S.S.: What’s this I hear about one of you guys dating some chick from the Sweetville Hitlerjugend? Is that true?

M: Well, all I’m saying is that it wasn’t me. Not saying that I wouldn’t partake, just that I didn’t.

S: Not it.

M: Posi swazi.

C: Shut up. Okay...shit. That’s done and done, all right?

M: Sure it is.

C: Come on...can’t a guy make one stupid mistake in his life? Let’s just get this clear: I don’t agree in any shape or form with her politics. Never did and never will. I thought she had a couple of good qualities—

M: I bet I know just what those two wonderful qualities are. Tune in Tokyo!

C: Shut it. Basically, I was hoping she’d grow out of it. Didn’t happen. The past is just that. Let’s move on.

Living Writers Series Reading at SDSU

I'm very excited to announce I've been invited to appear as part of the SDSU Living Writers series this semester. I'll be reading from Secrets of the Weird, and there will be copies of the book available for sale, as well as copies of the limited Civilized Cannibals tape (starting to run low on these tapes, and when they're gone they're gone). 

As a bonus, this event falls on the evening of my birthday! All the info is in the flyer. Come check it out if you can.

Bay Area Book Tour Coming Up!

Going to be in the Bay Area in a couple weeks for some Secrets of the Weird book tour events. Come out if you're in the area:

Saturday January 20th - QTY Treehouse 1684 7th Street Oakland 3pm
https://www.facebook.com/events/247685545770839/

Sunday January 21st - Borderlands Books 866 Valencia Street San Francisco 3pm
https://www.facebook.com/events/214188619126161/

Reading This Saturday

If anyone lives in or near Vista or just wants to make the trek to Standards Record Store, I'm doing a reading there this Saturday at 7pm. 216 E Broadway Vista, CA

Pick up a copy of Secrets of the Weird, the limited Civilized Cannibals tape, and buy some sick records from one of the best shops in San Diego County. See ya there!

Reading This Friday!

Whoah...two posts in one night! Just wanted to share that I'm doing a reading this Saturday at Heartwork Coffee Bar. They are celebrating the release of their zine Extraction, I'll be reading a very special chapter of Secrets of the Weird (seriously, don't miss this!), followed by a Misfits cover band. Should be a hoot...see you there!

Reading/Signing Event at Mysterious Galaxy July 29th for Secrets of the Weird

More info to come on this soon, but I've got an event coming up in San Diego at Mysterious Galaxy. It'll be Saturday July 29th at 2:00 pm. If you're in San Diego, you should definitely stop by and pick up a copy of the book. It would mean the world to me to see as many of you there as possible. Old friends, new friends, friends I see on a regular basis, friends I haven't seen in forever. You get the idea...

Looks like Mysterious Galaxy has put up a link where you can pre-order the book now, then just pick it up at the event. Or you can just show up and buy one if you so desire. Also, I believe there will be the opportunity for out of town folks to purchase signed copies from Mysterious Galaxy after the event, but I haven't confirmed that yet.

http://www.mystgalaxy.com/book/9781940658803

I'm also working on setting up events in Los Angeles and Orange County around the same time, and hopefully the Bay Area and Portland and Seattle in August and September. I'll keep you all posted!

Secrets of the Weird Cover Reveal

It's been a bit since I've posted anything, but I've been a tad busy. However, I'm pleased to reveal the official cover art for my debut novel, Secrets of the Weird, which will be released by Grey Matter Press this July. More info to come, but in the meantime, here's a tease:

The fulfillment of your every desire...

That’s the enticing yet dangerous promise of Sweet Candy, the new designer drug making the rounds through the community of club kids, neo-Nazis, drag queens, prostitutes and punks who populate the mean streets of Sweetville.

With its chewable hearts and candied lips threatening to forever transform the delicate social balance and the very lives of each and every member of the city’s underground, Sweet Candy is poised to ignite the tenuous powder keg that is life, love and lust in Sweetville.

But could the enigmatic back-alley surgeon Julius Kast and his partnership with a peculiar cult be the spark that lights the fuse once and for all? And how will their actions affect the life of a young woman named Trixie who is seeking salvation through transformation?

Take a remarkable journey that’s equal parts irreverent social commentary, revisionist dystopia, dark fantasy and horrifying reality when you travel to the unforgettable world of Sweetville’s counterculture where a host of sometimes dangerous, often deviant and always dark secrets are waiting to be revealed.

Such secrets refuse to be confined to Sweetville.
But instead will come home to live with you.
Changing everything.
Forever…

Book Review: I Can Taste the Blood by Various Authors, Edited by John F.D. Taff & Anthony Rivera

I’m a man who appreciates innovation. It doesn’t take avant-garde insanity to grab my attention, just the gumption to approach things a little differently. As a writer and avid reader, I especially love books with an innovative approach. For this particular project, John F.D. Taff can proudly claim the title of visionary. Inspired by a crude scribble in a public restroom, Taff eventually decided to assemble a crew of miscreants and madmen with one goal in mind: each write a novella with the title “I Can Taste the Blood.” The result? A themed anthology that essentially has no theme at all. The five stories contained within could not be more disparate from one another, but they still fit so perfectly well together. Allow me to elaborate a bit.

The first story, by Josh Malerman, succeeds for two main reasons: 1. It exists outside of the restraints of an era, and 2. It is pretty goddamned creepy. A slow burn about a man pursued in the desert by a mysterious fiend that will eventually get under your skin and burrow so deep that you can’t remove it, not even with tweezers.

J. Daniel Stone is the mastermind behind the next story. If someone had shown me this story with no author’s name attached to it and told me it was an unpublished story written by Clive Barker circa The Books of Blood, I might have believed them (and, just to be clear, that should be considered a compliment of the highest order). This is not to say the story relies on sheer pastiche, but it does swim in the same stream as Barker’s early work. Perverse grotesqueries abound, waxing poetic about the boundaries of film and art.

Up third is Joe Schwartz. Less horror, more transgressive crime fiction about bad men doing even worse things. It jumps around in time a bit, which I can definitely dig. I really loved his style overall and without a doubt want to read more from him in the future. However, his ending did commit what I consider to be a cardinal sin in fiction. He almost got away with it, though, and he probably would have had he pushed it just a little further. A minor gripe in an otherwise killer story, though. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Christ? Where do I even start with Erik T. Johnson? A mad genius? Perhaps. I can’t make a single lick of sense of his story, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it. I like a good challenge. Imagine Gummo by way of Beckett and Burroughs and you’ll be somewhere in the ballpark, but also so far off you might as well be in a different galaxy. Who needs a clear, traditional plot when the language is this mind-melting, when the entire vibe of the tale is like a ganon of leeches sucking your soul away? Exhausting in the best way possible.

The final story is written by the man John F.D. Taff himself. I’ve been raving about Taff for a while…I really do think he’s one of the most underrated writers in horror today. He’s been called the “King of Pain” for good reason. His stories have this way of tapping into the deepest, darkest canyons of your soul. Terrifying, but with a strong emotional core. No joke…one of Taff’s stories in his Little Deaths collection actually had me bawling on my lunch break at work. Though every story in this collection is a standout in its own way, Taff takes the crown here. This story is a bit more gruesome than his usual fare. It takes body horror to a new extreme, but never loses the sensitivity that is ultimately Taff’s brand. I promise, you’ll never think of teeth and mouths the same again.

I can’t recommend this anthology enough. Grey Matter Press continues to prove why they are such a strong force in the modern world of horror literature.

Book Review: The Night Marchers by Daniel Braum

Wow.

Technically, I could just end this review there, but that one word is just a bit ambiguous and likely does disservice to Braum’s creation.

For writers: these 13 stories contain a quality of writing that is so good it’ll either make you want to quit for good or make you strive to be infinitely better. This is all depending on how committed you are to your craft, naturally. Prose or pose—you decide.

For readers: this is the kind of book that will bring new mysteries into your life and make you question the fabric of reality. You’ll likely come back to it multiple times and find new meanings in certain passages and discover new phrases that resonate with you each time.

The stories in this collection do not fit conveniently into a neat box. The Night Marchers is full of sadness, beauty, and unprecedented wonder. Two cups of literary dark fiction, a heaping scoop of magical realism and urban fantasy, a tablespoon of horror. Yet, these genres only scratch the surface of what Braum seeks to accomplish. All of the tales are so equally strong that it is truly difficult to choose any standouts. A song that lasts forever, crocodile gods desperately swimming through a sea of jellyfish and charging a populated beach, a man who finds sensuality and solace in arson, phantasmal fish that want to return to the deep, a cat-faced demon killer, a mummified body that spawns mighty crops, giant sphinxes that lackadaisically stroll the earth. I’m taking some liberty with Braum’s ideas here, but hopefully it’s enough to pique your interest.

I noticed more than a few motifs throughout these stories. Braum seems to have a(n) (un)healthy obsession with the sea and Ancient gods, almost as if he seeks to create his own mythos, except I think many or all of the strange things in his stories are based on tales from forgotten or ignored cultures (this theme runs deep throughout the collection). Braum tackles racial issues without being heavy handed, and he also appears enamored with writing about exotic lands. Most of these stories take place outside of America in places I have never been and will likely never go. Braum has either done a lot of traveling or some really extensive research (or both), because these faraway places and their respective cultures feel fully realized, as do the characters.

It’s rare I find zero to complain about in a book, even in those I adore, but somehow The Night Marchers escapes even the most minor abuse I can summon up. I mean—the worst thing I can think to say about this book is “Why aren’t there more stories?” Braum is already a master of his craft. It almost scares me to think how good he’ll be in the coming years. There never really is any true justice in this world, but if there were, in a few years college creative writing students would find Braum’s short stories on the required reading lists of their syllabi.

This comes as no surprise, but Grey Matter Press and Cemetery Dance (who released the e-book version) have another winner on their hands here. If you’re looking for something visceral, The Night Marchers is probably going to confuse you because it’s far too quiet for that (but you should buy it regardless because it’s good to get out of your comfort zone every now and then). If you’re looking for something thought-provoking and elegant, yet still dark and somewhat mad, you’d be a fool to pass this book up. Buy it yesterday.

Book Review: Mister White by John C. Foster

Okay…so, full disclosure: even though this book was released by the same publisher that is releasing my novel and was written by a man who basically owes me his life for teaching him how to properly use his Square credit card reader despite never using one myself, this is still intended to be an honest and unbiased review. That being said, if I didn’t legitimately like the book, I just wouldn’t review it because I wouldn’t want to be a jerk. It’s kind of an unspoken (until now) policy of mine.

On to the review…

If you’ve ever wanted to read a seamless mash-up of spy thrillers and supernatural horror, you’re going to want to go ahead and stop reading this review and pick up Mister White right away. I never wanted to read something like that, to be perfectly honest. I’m personally not super familiar with the former genre (certainly not in its literary form), so I was initially skeptical I’d even enjoy the book when I first heard about it because it was outside of my usual taste zone. However, I would have been missing out big time. It’s good to branch out after all, kids.

Though there is a strong focus on the international world of espionage, the main plot deals with one spy in particular, Lewis Edgar, and the family he is somewhat estranged from. Sound kinda ho-hum so far? Well, throw in this mysterious force/demon/creature/supernatural being called Mister White (I honestly don’t know what the hell he is, but I’ll address that in a minute) who is out to get Mr. Edgar and his family, and I think you’ll discover something pretty darned interesting. And frequently terrifying. Like, seriously, can books have jump scares? Is that even legal? They’re pretty cheap moves in a filmic format, but pulling off something like that on the page is pretty amazing.

At times, this book is viscerally violent enough to please splatter fiends, and Foster pulls no punches in these scenes, but the book doesn’t rely solely on gore to get by. There are characters here worth caring about. Why? Because they are flawed and human. They make regretful decisions and do their best to rectify them (at least some of the time…not every loose end is neatly tied up, much like real life). However, I think Mister White’s primary strength is its pacing. That’s probably the first time I’ve ever made a statement like that about a book. Not because all other books lack pacing, but because this book would not be the same without its ShKAS speed. Mister White is a 256-page rollercoaster that delivers almost nonstop action without sacrificing story and character development. And, realistically, this would make one hell of a movie. I’m not sure if Foster wrote this book with this in mind, but I could picture almost every scene as a perfect image on the screen.

Now I must air a couple of grievances, albeit minor ones. First, the only real problem I had with the book (which may have been the one drawback of the frenetic pacing) is that I wasn’t always sure where in the world the characters were (like, literally where in the world). There seem to be various scenes taking place in various countries and spies of various nationalities, but at times I lost the sense of place. Perhaps this is completely normal for international spy thrillers and this is a case of reader failure. I do not know. Either way, not a huge deal. The only other thing that bothers me is Mister White is almost too shrouded in mystery. I definitely prefer this approach to the alternative (overexplaining everything about the character to the point the reader starts groaning as if they’ve just been taught a lesson they learned last week), but I would have liked just a few more details about his origins and intentions. I really want to know: Who is Mister White (I don’t think I’m supposed to say that…I think there’s some sort of Bloody Mary-type thing going on there that is also not fully explained). Perhaps there is a sequel in mind, and Foster is holding off on releasing some of these specifics until then? If so, I’ll let him slide. This time.

You will not be bored reading this book. The prose is tight, the pace is quick, the blood is red as an abattoir’s kill floor.