I've changed my title three times now, not including today. Doesn't "surge" sound better than "swarm" though?

Deconstructing Scary: Gun Nuts & The Surge Of Zombie Media

I.  The Surge

Lately, zombies have reached a critical mass. Here are just a few titles of new zombie books and zombie films from this year alone. And there will likely be another zombie song written by the time I’ve finished this list:

Atom the Amazing Zombie Killer, Dead Season, Dead World, Dead of Night, Dead Juju, Dead Man Talking, A Few Brains More, The Harvard Zombie Massacre, I Walked With A Zombie, Infected, Invasion of Not Quite Dead, The Infected, Night of the Living Dead Origins in 3-D, Portrait of a Zombie, The Riot, The Uglies, Winter of the Dead, The Killing Floor, The Dead, Zombie Apocalypse Redemption, A Little Bit Zombie, Boy Scouts Vs. Zombies, Condition Dead, Dead Condition, Condition Red, Red Man Walking, Infected Dead of the Invasion of the Not Quite Dead, Dead Man Stalking, Dog of the Dead, Dead Dog Riding the Rising Tide of the Dead… Okay, I may have made a couple of those up, but they might be indistinguishable. And this doesn’t include the glut of zombie video games that have also flooded the market. And the three songs that were written just now.

Oh, and there’s some sequel-itis of course, Deadlands 3, Zombieland 2, Resident Evil 5, and 28 Months Later, the sequel to 28 Weeks Later, which was the sequel to 28 Days Later, which, along with the Dawn of the Dead remake, George Romero’s long-awaited Land of the Dead, were the introduction of a new sort of running, “rage-fueled” version of the undead.

Also, before we forget, this month a film with the deceptively simple title Cabin In The Woods was released. And it basically tried to throw a bone to every horror film ever made. But what’s telling is (minor spoiler alert) the characters in the film are betting on a horror-movie-type situation inside this cabin, on which horror movie staples the characters will inadvertently choose to do themselves in with: evil clown, creepy little girl, monster snake, unicorn, merman… (merman? yes, merman) et cetera, and one cautious gambler just picks “zombies” on their giant betting pool board. Indeed, zombies turn out to be that evening’s villains. But they also turn out to be a certain variety of zombie, and the woman who made the bet wants her money when they start popping out of their graves. But another, wiser character sets her straight with this:

“Yes, you picked ‘zombie,’ but this is a Zombie Redneck Torture Family. Entirely different thing. It’s the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.”

We can hope for these kinds of subtle distinctions between these next hundred or so zombie films, but it’s probably more likely we’ll be looking at the difference between an elephant and an elephant. And, actually, once the true intentions of the film Cabin In The Woods become clear, it’s obvious that not only was that zombie redneck brood/run-of-the-mill zombie distinction unnecessary, but that the real reason zombies were chosen by the filmmakers is simply because they are an obstacle with the most easily recognizable characteristics, making them as unimportant to the proceedings as if the characters were battling the weather instead.

Another big movie on the horizon (and there’s been a lot of hope pinned on this one) is the much anticipated adaptation of Max Brooks’ sorta People’s History of the Zombie-fied United States: World War Z. Truthfully, what this book’s structure most resembles is that verbal history of the Beastie Boys that Rolling Stone published in the 90s. It looked unfilmmable, and, oops, maybe it is. Because this movie has been pushed back another year, leading some to (perhaps unfairly) speculate that zombie oversaturation in (critical) mass media has finally occurred.

Maybe not though. In zombie literature, it was Max Brooks’ earlier Zombie Survival Guide, a tongue-in-cheek guide to surviving a zombie apocalypse, that was more than a little responsible for the resurgence of the genre. This was because it took these situations further out of the horror arena and more into the closing credits of Romero’s original film, the survivalist’s fantasy.

In this book, you discovered very matter-of-fact instructions on how to survive. For example, avoiding hooded sweatshirts because they’re way too easy for zombies to snag (a very timely warning considering the Treyvon Martin case). It also explained you should wear ear plugs so the constant moaning doesn’t rattle you, as well as other practical advice on choices of bladed or blunt weapons, treatment of the infected and so on. In fact, the recent Zombieland (soon to be its own TV series) cribbed its own variation of these tips, counting them down on screen as the heroes ignored them to their peril. That movie also tapped into what is so intoxicating about the genre (besides killing with impunity, of course) by featuring a scene also found in every respectable zombie film, novel, or comic book (it’s right up there with the scene where some motley crew trashes a grocery store or shopping mall, celebrating a completely new society). I’m talking about when the characters finally arm themselves during a montage, usually a somber, almost reverential stockpiling of wonderful weapons:

got nuts? (this doesn't work by the way. save your squirt gun)

II.  Survival Nuts

Which leads me to my second subject. There’s a fine tradition of apocalypse scares and battening down the hatches and Y2Ks and Mayan calendar nonsense, giant sun flares, the occasional asteroid or rogue planet. But what most of these more popular scenarios have in common is not a genuine fear of impending doom. As someone who’s seen half of these trends come and go, realizing the most direct results are just empty grocery store shelves and a massive stockpiling of weapons, the connection has little to do with science fiction scenarios.

The latest “scare” (scare in scare quotes, because there’s nothing scary about it) is the zombie apocalypse. And this current incarnation of Armageddon really was the most predictable because even when offered up something obviously supernatural (hell, at least there is a sun that could have a sun flare), at the drop of a camouflaged hat people start hoarding guns and ammo, even hand-crafting blunt instruments in record numbers.

Recently, a student brought to my attention this advertisement video for “zombie killer” bullets:

As you can see, a survival type ducks around cars, shoots hordes of zombies in the face and chest, slides across the hood like the Dukes of Hazzard, looking oh, so serious, but clearly having a blast. Did you get to the end? The disclaimer? They claim “this is only for use on zombies. Zombies is not a cute code word for anything except zombies!”

Uh, right. But “zombie” is a code word. In the inner city, it’s what they call drug addled homeless people, often minorities. The fact that they needed this disclaimer should be alarming. It proves that conversation happened at this manufacturer, just like it happens on the online hunting forums.

So, if we can substitute any reason at all for survival types to stock up on canned beans, bullets, and guns, then there must be a deeper reason, right? Could it be an economic reason? This downturn is no coincidence. Do the previous scares, Y2K, etc., coincidence with high rates of unemployment? Sure do. Or are human beings just wishing they can shoot someone in the head? That, too. (If you don’t already know, this is the most popular way to deal with a “zombie”) Could these rugged, zombie-minded men and women really be afraid of a horde of homeless, rather than anything voodoo-related? It doesn’t seem like too big of a leap that the homeless population would be the first victims in the event of any Orson Wells War of the Worlds-type media scare.

The original Twilight Zone had an episode that’s been often imitated called “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.” The film The Trigger Effect was its most obvious descendent, even calling the intersection where the story begins “Maple Street” as an homage (or apology), and there’s Stephen King’s recent Under The Dome, too (that book is arguably a bit redundant of the plot of The Simpsons movie, or vice versa as the author recently presented evidence of a first draft of his book that dated back to the ’70s).

But in this Twilight Zone episode, a cul-de-sac suddenly loses power. And by morning…yep, they’re killing each other. Just like the popular new series Walking Dead demonstrates, the real problems result from the loss of phones, electricity, not monsters. Zombies are only the flavoring on any apocalypse.

"We want you! (and any brains, if you got 'em)"

III.  Zombies In Your Classroom

Up in Chicago at AWP this year, there was the usual talk about not restricting students to literary fiction in the workshop. This discussion has been around since my undergrad days, and no one had an easy answer then either. I would agree that genre fiction should be welcomed in the workshop arena, but I would also caution that a few restrictions never hurt anybody. I, myself, used to have trouble coming up with titles for works, much like Fiona Apple and her famous When The Pawn…blah blah blah…zzzzzzzzzz (and her upcoming The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, which is short for her), so I told myself they would all be three words. Three words, then I’m out! And for a while that worked. It turned out I had been hindered by creative freedom, or at least used it as an excuse for inactivity. A little focus did wonders for my own productivity. So, as obnoxious as it usually seems, I began to think that maybe my own solution could be universal? Therefore, I propose we ban literary fiction entirely, which is of course a genre just like anything else. Just kidding. Sort of. Not really. Flee!

Honestly, I would say it depends on the teacher. As a student, if your instructor has no knowledge (or, worse, no respect) of horror, crime, science fiction, or fantasy, he or she is less likely to be familiar with that genre’s strengths and less likely to offer good advice. As a student, you should always use your teachers to the best of their abilities and understand that there will always be a clash between what you’re required to read and what you enjoy.  If you restrict the genre in which you write to just one, you will have less to apply to your own writing as classes aren’t usually geared toward any particular genre. Oh, yeah, except literary fiction. Literary fiction becomes the catch-all. But, hopefully, quality will out. A good story, regardless of genre, should be recognizable to anyone with a passing knowledge of what constitutes good literature, student and teacher alike. Fingers crossed.

But good fiction of any kind mobilizes fears, horror fiction even more so. Therefore genre is a perfect opportunity to talk about the cultural imaginary in the classroom. So if you begin to notice an increased interest in guns, zombies, and the end of the world in your town, this will likely find its way into students’ work or into your class discussions in other ways. How can this fantasy to trash grocery stores, strap chainsaws onto your 4×4 (or kill with impunity!) be productively directed towards a critical engagement with a climate that’s producing such desires? Analyzing any zombie story by peeling away the random violence or genre tropes and instead concentrating on the characters’ concerns about their environment, the radical change in power structures, and of course the most dominating theme, the day-to-day survival such as finding food and caring for a family, is a good way to read these texts as a glimpse into the larger cultural imaginary, how we act out the priorities of a larger culture in which we make meaning.

So maybe we aren’t completely constructed by individual desire after all. And maybe our students here in the South (or students writing genre fiction) cannot be dismissed as typical gun collectors when they are collecting cultural anxieties instead.

Who's nuts?

Over at Spinetingler Magazine, I was recently nominated for Best Short Story On The Web for my story “Either Way It Ends With A Shovel.” It was published in Crime Factory #8, the issue with the disturbing Wheel Of Misfortune on the cover:

Is this what powered the creepy steamboat in Willy Wonka?

I’m very honored to be in the running with those monsters, and this nomination is extra exciting for a couple reasons. First of all, the title is based on a irate email a co-worker once sent me concerning our employer. The title was the subject line, and neither of us work there anymore. So that’s fun. Second, this story features a T-shirt with a flashing equalizer on the front of it! The true story of the T-Qualizer goes like this: I was attending a wedding in Vegas for a friend of mine, and I had this fond childhood memory of relatives buying me toys at weddings all my life so I’d stop crying, and this inspired me, in return, to buy silly stuff for the groomsmen. Like one guy got a Spider-Man pinkie ring watch thing (which the punk lost the same night) and I got the best man a T-Qualizer. He received the glowing American flag version below because he looks just like the kid from Varsity Blues…

This is what it does if you get flipped over and over and over and over...it's like those pens with the naked girls on them.

…so I figured anyone wearing this around a casino would provoke someone into at least one drunken argument, right? But instead the crowds just loved it. The crowds by the gaming tables anyway. Until we slunk into some “world famous” (?) burlesque show around the corner. We had real good seats because we were living in the casino at this point, so when the show started and they turned down the lights and this pulsing dance beat started, we were right up front. Now, to be sure that everyone would get the full effect of the dancers when the curtain went up, the casino wanted it to be pitch black in there. Blackest black. None more black. Vin Diesel would be unable to kill someone with a teacup it was so dark in there. And it was.

Except for the T-Qualizer.

On the front of the best man’s shirt, the flag was pulsing with the music bright as hell and lighting up about half the room. There was sign warning the audience about immediately ejecting anyone who didn’t turn off their cellphones, so our wedding party expected to get the boot at any moment. And sure enough, a security guard with a red laser light to lead her way shows up and implores the Best Man to please please turn off his shirt. “Right. Now.” But instead of turning it off, (and this is probably why he gets to be the Best Man) he claims it’s “connected to him” and there’s “just no way to shut it off.” He pretends to struggle with the flag on his chest, pleading, “I can’t! I have no buttons!” And this confuses everybody, and there’s that moment when you can feel a crowd getting angry around you all at once. But then she reaches under his shirt and yanks his wires, plunging us mercifully back into darkness and saving us from the mob. Amazed at the balls on the Best Man, we buy him a bunch of beer after the show, flag happily pulsing away.

So, long story short, I wanted to get a T-Qualizer in a story somehow, around much higher stakes than just a weekend of assholes getting drunk and never getting the beatings they deserved, even if the shirt just made a cameo. So, hopefully, my story in Crime Factory answers the question, “What would Jesus do…if he was wearing this particular shirt and got Tasered.” (Also, the story teaches you how to rob a roulette table with bubble-gum machine toys! You’re all like, “Tell me something I don’t know.”)

But go read all the stories. I’ve read all but two as of now, and the competition is scary. Matt Funk wrote nineteen more stories on his way to get the mail today, and they’re better than most of what’s on the street, and Court Merrigan has one of those last names that just invokes happiness. How can I compete with that? Stephen Graham Jones has three names, which cancels mine out, and he just published a story about zombies fighting robots because just a zombie problem wasn’t enough for him. Hilary Davidson probably has so many of these awards, she’s got a trophy case topped off with a stuffed leopard by now. Nigel Bird is crawling all over these award categories like a coconut crab (Google it then scream) with nominations such as Best Cover, not to mention his Pulp Ink Zine everywhere, too, so that guy’s clearly got skills. His story is over at All Due Respect, two more stories are over at Beat To A Pulp, two more at Plots With Guns, one at Shotgun Honey, one with some great artwork over at Tehelka, one at Pank, one at Flash Fiction Offensive…see what I’m saying? What I’m saying is I’m probably doomed.

Go here to read my story (page 183).

Go here to read the rest of the stories.

Just kidding! I kid! I kid! I would never use shady political tactics to suppress voting.

Go here to read those stories! They’re all quite amazing. Funk & Merrigan! (sounds like the best encyclopedia set ever), writing machine Jones! Peter Ferris sticking it to Walt Disney! And a bunch more.

Go here to vote.

Go here to buy a T-Qualizer (do not do this).

But read everything.  There are 11 more categories besides Best Story, and a ton of new stuff to discover, like Jason Stuart’s Raise A Holler in Best Novel – New Voice.

It’s a huge list. Too many to list here without neglecting more work. And they all tap and tingle spines.

I haven’t updated in a bit, so let me get the shameful self-promotion out of the way first and kill nine birds with one stone. Or, better yet, with a deluge of purple hyperlinks! First up, a couple recent new releases:

“Greenhorns,” my dream of a better, more lethal version of Deadliest Catch, is in the new collection Horror Carnival from Open Casket Press, “Three Minutes,” the prologue to my latest novel-in-progress Spunkwater, based on late-night conversations with a former paramedic turned stand-up comedian, is in Pure Slush’s print debut, Slut, plus I’ve got some more bug love over at The Fiddleback with something called “Swatter,” a story that is precisely 79% true. And please don’t forget a personal favorite of mine, “Either Way It Ends With A Shovel,” based on both my own breakup and Flywheel’s former fiction editor’s diabolical Vegas wedding, a weekend that made The Hangover look like The Hangover II. That one is in Crime Factory #8 (check out their revamped website) and also contains a completely workable scam for stealing thousands of dollars from any Roulette wheel you choose. What else? Oh, yeah! I was ringside as mohawked madman Simon Jacobs practically made his new Safety Pin Review a household name, even getting the attention of a certain Sherman Alexie.

But let me spend some overdue extra time with the new Pulp Modern #2, the collection with the saucy Santa action below…

His list was so long it rolled right out the door.

There are more than a couple narratives you could infer by this cover, depending on who you decide is actually Mrs. Claus up there. This collection, another successful round-up by editor Alec Cizak, contains my second-longest title ever, “Three Ways Without Water (Or The Day Roadkill, Drunk Driving, And The Electric Chair Were Invented),” and this publication was mucho fun for me for a couple reasons. First off, rejections had been raining all purple all around this story for awhile now. In fact, it was fast becoming its own cautionary tale, as you can read here at Flywheel Magazine’s “Rejected Story Holds Press Conference.” But, luckily, it was able to finally kick the dirt off its boots and find a home. And for that I’m grateful. Loosely based on the Marty Robbins’ twangy masterpiece “Big Iron,” and condensed from one of the thirteen climaxes in my unproduced screenplay Pig Iron, I had just about given up on anyone taking a chance on this thing. So it felt real good to finally see my weird postmodern western on the page.

So I finally got the chance to crack the spine around the rest of Pulp Modern #2, and obvious stand-outs included M.C. Funk’s “Breed Out The Bad,” featuring the incredible vanishing Tarwater girls, a tale not unlike (my flawed memory of) June Spence’s “Missing Women,” but ten shades darker, hideous motivations revealed, a much more wicked conclusion, and jammed full of the trademark Funkensteinian confidence and style.  There’s also Stephen G. Eoannou’s “The Aerialist,” an alternate ending of sorts (maybe even a little wish fulfillment for monsters like myself) to the excellent daredevil documentary Man On Wire. I also enjoyed Steven Alexrod’s “The Auteur,” which reminded me of the seedy, Hollywood-bashing flicks from director Larry Cohen’s mid-’80s glory days. Mr. Cizak has also unearthed a classic by deceased British humorist Jerome K. Jerome called “The Haunted Hill Or The Ruined Home,” which kind of reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft narrating A Christmas Carol and suited the original Christmas release date rather nicely. JC Hemphill’s “The Void” was a fun, too, kind of an evil version of those ACME portable holes, sans Wile E. Coyote. John Kenyon’s “Gusano Gigante” rears its ugly head toward the end of the book, then takes a bow (put that title into Yahoo’s Babel Fish and it’ll spoil the ending if the Google images don’t freak you out first). Chris Le Tray, who penned the Indiana Jonesy favorite from the first Pulp Modern collection, returns here with “A Blunderbus For A Broken Heart,” a great little story where the gun is not only a main character, but also not really what she seems. Guns are chicks, right? Like cars? Anyway, if you didn’t pick this book up for Christmas, now’s your chance to right that wrong before someone smacks you open-handed across the face right in front of everybody. And this book is the perfect size to do just that.

More purple, you say? Okay, did I mention there’s a new Flywheel? I didn’t? Well, go read this thing right now. At the very least,  you will find out the climax to Court Merrigan’s epic Saga Of The Unrejected.

Upcoming readings, you say? Well, I’ll be taking a road trip to Chicago soon for two shadowy, disreputable, peripheral AWP events. First, I’ll be tossing back a couple with some of the Plots With Guns crew at the Galway Arms, nary a block away from where Dillinger was shot, then I’ll be representing/embarrassing Flywheel with co-host and convicted barn burner (“Acquitted!”) Jason Stuart, the author of Raise A Holler and Editor-In-Chief of Burnt Bridge.

Damn! So many purple links up there. Purple rain in Spain falls mainly on some planes. Seriously though, any more purple and I’m gonna have to purify myself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka.

Upcoming stuff: I have a handful in the next couple months like “Shock Collar,” the invisible-dog-fence story I read at my MFA graduation last December. That one is in the spanking new Indiana Crime, with a shout-out to James Dean’s grave, a passage I bungled badly during said reading. Looking forward to finally having the time to read this whole anthology very soon, hopefully up in Chicago when everyone else falls asleep like normal human beans.

You can't get blood from a stone, but from a gun...

Also upcoming, I got a love/not-quite-crime story in the special Valentine issue of Yellow Mama, then my first mini-play, a Shakespeare satire titled “Friction Ridge,” (last seen being acted out by professionals in my Shakespeare Adaptations class to theme music from Jurassic Park and Public Enemy’s “Fuck Tha Police”) will be in Beat to a Pulp any day now, a publication I’ve been chasing for a couple years at least. And finally, two stories, “We’re Made Of Meat” and “Last Last Meal” will both be in the upcoming Pure Slush novel-in-stories Gorge, which I’m particularly excited about because it’s all based around the shenanigans of the opening day of an imaginary restaurant and I’m always hungry and because I got carried away and wrote two stories for it instead of one. Click my last swollen, purple link up there to check out the character bios, maps, and menus that they came up with for this book. I also highly recommend submitting here. Matt Potter knows his shit. New themes every month. That joint is on fire right now.

In other news, my fridge magnet poetry should be required by law.

Wait, that wasn’t Lake Minnetonka? You purple little bitch.

The special nipples-and-tattoos edition of Needle is out, and I burned through this thing in about a week. So much good crime fiction in here, and I’ll try to hit on all the highlights. But first, I was going to keep up the habit of firing off some background on stories I’ve written. So here’s a little history of my story “Schrödinger Rat” that’s tucked in there, too…

This is what happens when you leave a magazine out in the cold. They'll cut glass. (Probably cut class, too! Just look at this dude. No way he goes to class)

I’ve actually been kicking around different incarnations of this tale for about ten years. Its genesis was in a hospital waiting room where my brother was getting this Total Recall-sized benign mass/tracking device removed from his nasal cavity, and my dad says, “They should make a prison movie where they smuggle in a gun. But just one gun, you know? I’d go see that movie.” And I said, “Yeah, but they’d have to smuggle in one bullet, too.” Then somebody said, “Or better yet, pieces of the gun!” “Yeah! And maybe all sorts of stuff comes in all the time, even people!” “Perfect, the first movie where someone breaks into prison!” “We’ll be rich!” Then we upended the magazine rack.

So, about a month later, my brother’s head was healed and me and my dad kept throwing ideas around and found that we’d somehow written an entire screenplay, a first for both of us.  He would brainstorm, and I’d do all the writing, and that process moved pretty fast. We called it Brickhouse, (there was a bunch of Three Little Pigs and Three Blind Mice metaphors), got the thing copyrighted, and I started sending out queries. Then we both threw a tantrum when Steven Segal put out some crappy movie where someone breaks into prison, or so we heard. We didn’t want to pay to see it. Half Past Dead, I think it was. Luckily, that movie bombed, so I kept shopping around the script, then came this show called Prison Break. Where someone breaks into a prison. Again. Are you kidding me?? Who’s going through our garbage?? So with nothing to lose and one disappointment away from breaking into a prison myself, I entered the screenplay into this contest called “Project Greenlight.” Oh, boy. Does everybody remember Project Greenlight? Is it still around? It was a series on HBO where you sent them a screenplay, and then Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, inspired by making their own screenwriting dreams come true, made your much-less-likely dreams come true by picking one lucky writer to direct said screenplay, even though writing and directing have little or nothing at all to do with each other (I heard they remedied that in later seasons though). But let me skip way ahead. If anyone still really wants to read about how short-lived my Project Greenlight experience was, skip to the comment boxes. I’ll put an excerpt or two down there to distance myself from the embarrassing version of me that typed it all back then. Plus, I’ve whined about it at length in other places already.

"Nope." "Sorry, not interested." "Not for us, thanks."

Anyway, I was getting discouraged sending out Brickhouse and making hypothetical soundtracks for it in my spare time. One studio said they weren’t into it, but if I could combine a western with something about aliens, they’d be all for it (I shouldn’t have scoffed.) Another one said, “Wonderful, email it and we’ll print it over in our offices and thumb through it while you wait…it’s printing now…it’s still printing…it’s still printing. What is this? Let us call you back. Have you ever written a script before?”

Yes, it was a double album. Lots of Cypress Hill.

So one day, I stopped singing along to the CD, and I decided to adapt it into a novel instead. Yep, that’s backwards! I got a few chapters in, thought I wasn’t making things hard enough on myself as it was, and decided to condense the entire thing into a short story. That failed. So then I tried to take a couple of the concepts and favorite speeches and rewrite the whole thing with the prison itself telling the story (I’d just discovered the collective “we” of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Virgin Suicides). Suddenly the story felt like it was working. Meanwhile, in theaters, Robert Downey Jr. was on his 9^th comeback with that Sherlock Holmes movie, and around the same time there was a contest in a journal about writing a “London” sorta story and another magazine was having a U.S. Vs. U.K. issue, so I decided, “Hey, let’s send Sherlock Holmes (or a descendant of Doyle) into this weird prison I’d constructed and see how he’d fare.” Combine that idea with a summer of Lock Up on MSNBC, stir the pot, and boom, “Schrödinger Rat.” I sent it out. Needle Magazine finally said, “Yes,” (after I chased them for a year), and me and my dad high-fived. Then he said, “Wait, what the hell did you do to our script?” I gave him a copy of this issue, but if he’s read it yet, he’s made no indication. He still talks about casting our movie (Clint Eastwood in all the roles). I still make soundtracks for it…

I told you it was a lot of Cypress Hill.

Well, how about the rest of the new issue of Needle, you ask patiently? Yes, so good. I’ll start with the Gil Brewer story, “Sweet Amy” and jump around. I read it backwards like everything else I do.

First off, Google this guy so I don’t have to explain who he is. I’ll wait. Okay, see, that was an interesting guy. And the fact that Needle dug up this story to give it its day in the sun is good news for all of us. You can feel the mileage on this man in the prose, for one thing. And it’s also the most romantic thing in this collection. Seriously. You know that song by Dr. Hook “If You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman?” Yeah, it’s nothing like that. Well, maybe if instead of saying, “You watch her eyes,” the song said you should do something much more drastic. Also, check out when the poor hero gets mocked when he goes shopping for swimming trucks! Poor bunny.

Then there was Michael Moreci’s “Anonymity.” It says in his bio that he’s a comic book guy, and it kind of shows.  Maybe I’m just imagining this since I read his bio before I read the story (I told you I was reading it backwards), but there seemed to be lots of visual cues to position the mind’s eye while reading. Good story, but I really dug how easy it was to imagine the scenes more than anything.

Nolan “You Gotta Bleed To Feed” Knight’s story, “Bleeders Abound,” was a seedy street tale that was oh, so nice and long, too. Please, magazines, don’t get too caught up in those word counts. If it’s good, let it run loose awhile longer like this.

What else? I should mention that maybe it’s because I read this in the wrong order (I really wanted to finish “Wolf Tickets” first) but damn if the second half of this collection isn’t home run after home run.

I do have to wonder how I would have felt reading Ray Banks’ “Wolf Tickets” at once (or in a couple sittings) rather than the way I did, with Needle stretching it out like a serial because reading it like this really suits it. It’s dialogue heavy, divided up perfectly, and I really was anxious to find out what was gonna happen. You could/should read all three parts when it’s finally released all glued back together (that’s gonna happen, right?) or better yet, get the three issues of Needle that they’re in. You should probably do that actually, because then you can read Cameron Ashley’s story in the last issue, “Dog’s Breakfast,” that takes place on the exact street corners and cafés where I stayed in Australia. I know you’re like, “why would I care about that?” Because maybe you can picture the same horrible things happening to me that happen to his Fitzroy dead enders? Maybe just read it because it was a great issue. It’s got a girl on the front with a belly ring. Anyway, “Wolf Tickets.” It’s got that great multiple perspectives thing, revenge, shotguns, crowbars and crowbars, and “plans, plans, plans.” It goes fast.

Another gem was Holly “What’s In The Box?” West’s story “Once A Loser.” This one has a great hook, a mysterious letter from the recently deceased. He leaves his uncle a key, some cash, and a note saying something like, “Open the box under my bed, deliver the goods to my friend. Try to make something of yourself.” After that, I’m in. And I’m asking myself, “How long before Lenny screws up something that sounds this easy?”

Keith Rawson’s “Fearless Zombie Killers” has probably my favorite ending in the collection. I don’t want to ruin anything, but he wraps up the proceedings with a finale that equates two outrageous story lines, one more outrageous than the other. Maybe it was just me, but it somehow makes the tall tale that opens the show a bit more legit, while making the reader almost doubt the truth of one they just lived through. It was a deft move.

Another standout, Art Taylor’s “The White Rose of Memphis” indulges in an irresistible plotline, that bed-and-breakfast murder mystery weekend thingy gone awry. This is always potential for some fun. And this one was a lot of fun. You gotta love it when a character says, “Is that a real gun?” and someone goes, “Blanks. It’ll sound real loud, and they’ve even got it rigged to leave a couple of smudges on the ceiling.” Yeah. Right. To answer that character’s other question, “No, they did not have ski masks back in the ‘40s.”

Great stuff as always from a magazine that Steve Weddle said he created so you’d have something “to smack your cat with.” Well, the cat has been smacked (That was a lie. I’d never smack a cat unless I caught it smoking). So, that should do it. I’ve read three issues of Needle now, and every one of them read like a Greatest Hits. Get some.

Epilogue: Tune out at this point if you don’t want to read a sour grapes rant a decade old. Below (in the comment boxes so I can always deny it later) is my diary entry from hundreds of years ago kinda sorta detailing my Project Greenlight adventure. I would recommend not reading this. I post it now (or maybe later) just for the extremely bored or curious. That version of me down there was pouting. Kind of a crybaby. This is not my best idea. Sour. Grapes. Stop reading now…

Don't eat the grapes. Sour or otherwise.

My story “Mosquito Bites” was workshopped at the University of Pittsburgh a couple years back as a chapter of my manuscript/novel/phonebook Spiderbites. The story was originally titled “The Living Shit,” which fellow students thought was a bit abrasive. So I leaned toward “Mosquito Bites” instead as I’d suddenly become obsessed with having every possible type of bite in this book that was suddenly swelling exponentially (from 300ish pages to about 1,300 before madman guru Chuck Kinder chopped it into three equally unwieldy, but easier-to-carry chunks). So there was chapter after chapter of bites in this sucker. Chapters titled “Snake Bites,” Cat Bites,” Shark Bites,” Dog Bites,” “Monkey Bites,” “Fly Bites,” “Lizard Bites,” “Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite,” and the conclusion, “Bolus” (’cause that’s what happens after you get done bitin’). But the mosquito bites in question (and this was the case with the rest of the chapters/stories) were really something else entirely, needle tracks from shootin’ up, chronic scratchscratchscratching by the hero, all sorts of stuff really. Of course, the needle on this kind of golden, man-made mosquito would be injecting rather than drawing blood. But with either one, there was still an exchange of sorts going on. Google “mosquito” and “defecate” and see what you get. Just make sure the SafeSearch is on. Did you do it? Sorry about that. To make up for that nastiness, Google “coconut crab” instead. There! Happiness! Look at that shit. That dude’s got one crawling up his ribs like a ladder!

But, yes, Pulp Modern. Check it out if you get a chance. It ran up and down the flagpole of the Amazon Short Story Collections bestseller list, getting as high as number 3, nested just under robot boxers and Stephen King. Now, history has taught us robot boxers can be stopped. Mr. King, however, won’t be stopped by anything short of a runaway van, and even that clearly doesn’t stop him for long. But, hopefully, some strangers grabbed a copy and will get to hold my bug bites in their hands. But the book is stacked with all sorts of other stuff that can sell it a lot better than me. Like…

He brought a knife to a gun fight. With a redhead, no less.

And it’s stacked in other ways, too. Lawrence Block starts it all off with “Murder Is My Business.” Yes, I said Lawrence (holy shit!) Block. My favorite line, “Bodies like that should not be wasted on rich old men.” Bodies! Double meaning again. And you’ll notice a couple of song titles in the table of contents, too. “Train In Vain,” by John Kenyon, and “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer,” by Copper Smith. Kenyon especially (the founder of the new Grift Magazine), makes good use of music and all sorts of sensory overload in his twisty little tale. Killer last line, too. There’s also Tommy Pluck’s “Legacy of Brutality” that’s its own oddly touching slice of ugly.

Oh, yeah, the book is divided into three sections. I forgot to mention that. So you get crime like those up there, then you get some freaky fantasy action in the middle, and finally some westerns at the end. The fantasy section has one of my personal favorites in it, Glen G. Gray’s “Disintegration,” a throwback to King’s Night Shift heyday actually (where his horror teetered on the verge of magical realism before anyone knew what to call it). It’s also a great example of Gray’s clinical precision when it comes to horror, a style I’ve dubbed “Cronenbergian Noir” because I’ll say silly shit like that sometimes. There’s also a nutty Kafkaesque dark comedy deal in there called “Omelette du Jour” by Yarrow Paisley. And you know when anyone says “Kafkaesque,” they’re either talking about The Trial or the waking-up-and-turning-into-a-cockroach story. I won’t say which. But it’s not The Trial. And no, homeboy doesn’t turn into an omelet. What else? A ton. Chris La Tray and C.J. Edwards had some good ones. La Tray with some creepy treasure hunting, Edwards with some hardcore sci-fi.

Then there’s the dusty, bullet-ridden final section. Edward A. Grainger (the guy that does Beat To A Pulp actually, he’s got nine more aliases) continues his stranglehold on the neo- western genre with his Cash Laramie sumbitch and the dense, ever-growing mythology around this character. It’s an impressive world he’s weaving, seriously. And Jimmy Callaway adds to his list of hysterical story titles with “Billy Clanton, You Take Off Them Boots Now!” Callaway gives us a version of the events at the O.K. Corral through the eyes of one of the forgotten, most easily dispatched of the villains. I love stories like this, looking at history (or myth) from a different angle, over there, peeking out from behind that horse’s legs.

And I got one peeking out in there, too, like I said. But I should probably come clean about how all that talk of spider bites and mosquito bites earlier was really just a smokescreen for what I really wanted to do, which was chronicle the most believable beating someone could deliver and receive. But I won’t. There’s a reason this is the closest thing to realism I’ve done lately, and that’s a reason I’m going to duck right now all cowardly-like with some misdirection. But first, speaking of ducks! I was just in a corn maze earlier today, and they had this duck crossing sign that was mesmerizing (probably not a good quality for a warning sign). See, one of the ducks was flipping out on the sign, losing its mind or something, and they painted it on there as if this happens every time they cross the road. Or maybe it’s trying to distract the other ducks from something horrible? Who knows. Does this really happen every time though? It must if this image made it onto this sign and is instantly recognizable to motorists everywhere as your typical parade of ducks. Hell, I would believe it, and I’ve only seen two duck parades in my lifetime. So this image will stand as accurate. Until someone can prove otherwise.

If someone wrongs someone on the page, they can’t just dissect it in their head on the ride home like they would (or I would) do in real life.  They got to be dealt with! Punched in the face? Yep! Wronged right back? Sure. Why not steal that car? Why not put that character’s head through the TV? At this point, I think I’ve exhausted everything a character can think about wanting to do but not having the guts to do it. And, yes, I understand that these little literary Hamlets are much easier to relate to than someone who, say, starts eating his cellphone rather than yelling into it. But despite his reputation as a no-action leading man, remember, Hamlet did eventually go off.  Big time. Everyone seems to forget that part.

So, it was Chekhov’s gun, right?  That’s what the internet’s telling me right now:

“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” - Gurlyand’s Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov.

Then, in 1889, twenty-four-year old Ilia Gurliand notes these words from a conversation with Chekhov:

“If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.”

And finally, at some point in the late 1990′s one of my instructors at Bowling Green says to me when I run in late:

“Hey, if there’s a rifle over the fireplace, it better not have cobwebs on it by the end of the flick.” – Possible Bowling Green Professor or Genius Janitor Pulling Good Will Hunting Ruse (sans math).

So with all these variations, he must have said it all the time, right? Chekhov, not the janitor.  There seems to be no indication of a “fireplace” in any actual quote though, near as I can tell, but I know I’ve heard that more than once, too. Let me look online a little
harder right now…

Okay, I’m back. It looks like sometimes it’s a loaded rifle, sometimes it’s a pistol, sometimes just a “gun,” but no fireplace. Oh, well. But if you want a good example of that fireplace, check out Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. In that movie, they mount a bear trap over a fireplace, and by the end of the movie…it goes off.  And by “goes off,” I mean the bear trap is on somebody’s goddamn head. Also, in case the point isn’t make clear enough, two nubile young women bring in this bear trap at the beginning of the film (they call it a “man trap,” too, of course) walking it slowly down the center of the stage, er, street, while the townspeople hoot and holler.

And check this out, apparently, some 1997 movie called Chekhov’s Gun had the characters discover their gun in the first act and then go about desperately trying to avoid it. But just like the inevitable murder in Dick’s “Minority Report” or that short story I sort of remember from Omni Magazine called “Five Sight,” this will always makes things worse. I also read or heard from someone wise that we look for Chekhov’s guns everywhere now because of movies like Harry Potter and the glut of shows like Lost (hopefully soon to be interrupted by Obama’s State of the Union Address. Of course, if the show’s writers were smart, they’d work that interruption into the script and be remembered forever rather than just whining about it all week). And in cinema these days, there also seems to be a plague of that reverse writing and backwards sprinkling of clues that was so infuriating in those Encyclopedia Brown mysteries.  It’s a good point.

But I think they’re missing an even bigger one:

Originally, everyone mistook the Chekhov’s Gun thing for foreshadowing, at least that’s a popular opinion these days.  It’s fun for scholars to bust people when they use that quote and smugly explain over a sigh that he never meant for us to be sprinkling in clues to be revealed later in a story, that he was simply giving advice on story efficiency and that’s all.  In other words, what he meant was “introduce nothing you won’t use, kids!”  But, you know what, I don’t think that’s right either.

I think it really is all about a gun.

Think about it! This is why Cheknov kept telling anyone who would listen at these dinner parties his little nugget of wisdom, but making sure it always contained a weapon.  Yes, I agree that any advice sounds great when it uses a gun to make a point. Even more fun is when ESPN’s Troy Webb uses, count ‘em, 739-firearm-related metaphors in a
single article…

“Players shoot all the time. They fire away, they launch from outside, they let it fly, they have a quick trigger, they hit baskets, they shoot the lights out, they’re right on target, they’re long-range bombers. Players steal the ball, trigger the fast break and throw
bullet passes for slams. Oh, my God, the coach just shot a spectator in the fucking face with a Spencer rifle…” – Actual Words

And, okay, maybe they don’t really mean guns and bullets on the court (which would make for better basketball, I’m certain, just watch the opening scene of The Last Boy Scout for inspiration if you doubt it) but this man meant a gun, people!  There is no metaphor! He must be talking about an actual gun because…

I don’t know. Because he used a gun in his own story?! Yeah, that’s it. Remember Uncle Vanya in that one story called “Uncle Vanya”?  That’s right. Don’t introduce a homicidal Uncle Vanya either unless he’s gonna go off.

Think of it this way, and his advice for writers is so much easier to follow. Try this real quick: Substitute “gun” with “rabbit.” See what I mean?  Now imagine Chekhov going around telling people variations on a “don’t introduce a rabbit unless it’s gonna go off” axiom.  People start to wander away at those dinner parties now, don’t they? Okay, maybe that made more sense before I typed it, but what I’m trying to say is this:

Sometimes it’s a loaded rifle, sometimes it’s a pistol, sometimes it’s over the fireplace, but it’s never a rabbit. Unless it’s packing.

life size

And now I like to delude myself that the new awesome cover (down there under the soup!) kinda, sorta, accidentally depicts the climax of my story.  Now I’m not delusional enough to pretend that man+cigarette=gun is new to the crime genre or anything, but that is what happens in my goldfish tale, I swear!  And probably in every other story in the book, too.  Of course, my hero is cradling a football-shaped fish bowl in his other hand to make him unique, so I’ll have to scribble that image on the back cover of my copy, too.  But, seriously, the more that I stare at this, the more I wish I would have had the hero try to light his cigarette off the end of this smoking gun.  Is that even possible?  How cool would that be?  Maybe somebody could try it for me.  I know you see it a lot in the movies where someone will light something with the gunshot itself, or more often, put out some candles, lightbulbs, hard looks.  But does the barrel really get that hot?  And/or would somebody suspend disbelief if they read this on the page?  What the hell.  I’m using it.

Hey, while we’re at at, another fun fact about The Death Panel! Back when the hard-boiled elves were slaving away getting it ready to roll, our editor asked us if there was anything we wanted to change before print.  And I got so excited about my first bio ever that they were actually gonna slap in the back of a real live book that I wanted to give a shout-out to my blog that had other old writings and movie reviews and goofy stuff.  So I asked her to please put “buglove.blogspot.com” in there. Then I started to think about this a month later.  Uh oh.  Turns out maybe I had named my blog “buglove” back in the day, but the website was actually at spiderbites.blogspot.com.  Oops!  Yeah, clearly I hadn’t logged in there in some time.  So I was panicking, resigning myself to my screw-up, when a more rational friend of mine was like, “Slow down, Holmes.  No problem.  Just scoop up that other blog address and type some stuff on it real fast.”

Great idea!  Wait.  Somebody already did that.  Somebody loves bugs as much as I do?  No, it’s even worse (or better) than you think.  This mysterious somebody signed up for Blogger like seven friggin’ years ago, called the page “buglove,” then posted exactly one sentence about…wait for it…getting a bug in his sandwich.

Or something like that.  I’m totally serious here.  If anyone actually read my bio in Death Panel then had any interest in this blog I was pimping, they would click on this address and instead read something to effect of…

“Yo, you want to get a bug with your steak?  Eat at Joe’s!  Burp!”

You got to love that.  And after this thing was posted, the mysterious somebody must have cracked some knuckles and smiled proudly, knowing a life’s work had been completed.  Then turned off the computer.  Fast foward seven years.  So, anyway, hopefully people who stumble onto “buglove” will read the comments below this bit of wisdom where I tried desperately to leave some breadcrumbs back to my actual blog. Or maybe they won’t and just decide I’m the kind of idiot that wants someone to read this one ancient sentence about my lunch gone wrong almost a decade ago.  Either way I’ll take the fly in my soup.  It’ll probably be funny later in life.

You can light your cigarette with it. Seriously.

So, I thought I’d test-drive this thing by babbling about how I got the idea for my story “Nine Cops Killed For a Goldfish Cracker” (found in the new dark crime anthology The Death Panel up there) because I can’t wait forever for someone to ask me this particular question. Just like the kid in The Commitments who sat in his bathtub rehearsing answers for imaginary interviews, I, too, often sit in the tub and think aboutThe Commitments and what a tragedy the imaginary break-up of that imaginary band was. Five more minutes and Wilson Pickett would have showed, you self-absorbed little punks! Where did the love go? In the midnight hour no less?

(holding up a bar of soap for a microphone like Jimmy Rabbitte did)

The story was originally called “Fish Bites Cop,” and when it’s not in the pages of that anthology, that’s its real name. The longer title was much more trashy and memorable though, especially fitting for the hard-boiled experiment I was attempting, and everyone seemed to like it a lot better. They were probably right. But the original title feels closer to the truth when I think back to the story’s quick and painless birth, conceived as it was while watching Herzog’s slow-as-flies-fornicating masterpiece Fitzcarraldo, as well as pondering what I’d learned in a class where I’d just recently received my first grad school C+ (the grade-card equivalent of a dead fish, apparently, judging by the warning letter I got soon after). See, our teacher, who was in no way to blame for my grade, by the way, (no one will ever believe how grateful I am for that class, I simply didn’t speak the language) he was sooo excited about some of us reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for the first time and told me that if I really, really liked the Spanish galleon on the cover that much (I chose to analyze the cover within an inch of its life because I was petrified of what was actually inside that monster of a book, especially after a daunting family tree on page 1 that would make Tolkien snort beer out his nose) that maybe I should check out Fitzcarraldo some time, a movie about a man who drags a gigantic steamer through the jungle and over a mountain at about 3 inches an hour. For reasons my teacher couldn’t possibly know at the time, this was actually my idea of a perfect movie! I bought the DVD immediately. And it did not disappoint (neither did One Hundred Years, for that matter) but I became especially obsessed with a scene at the beginning of the film where the future-boat-dragging madman looks for some financing for his dream only to have some rich prig laugh at him and toss a wad of money into a pond where a big fish gulps it down. Glorp!

Whoa. I kept thinking how that could be a whole movie right there. And why didn’t he dive in after that cash? And which fish had swallowed it? And how would you know by looking at them? And on and on and on. So then I started thinking of making it the starting line of a classic hour-in-the-life, film noir, race-to-the-finish line deal. And I immediately ran into the problem of having a tiny goldfish swallow an amount of money large enough to induce at least nine murders. This is where the “how many times can you fold a bill in half?” subplot came in, and now me and the hero were off and running. In fact, the question of folding things over and over became more important than the fish at times (I’m told this question of folding money is finally answered conclusively on an episode of Mythbusters). And it wasn’t until my ill-fated final presentation of One Hundred Years of Solitude in that class, where I brought in a bag of delicious goldfish crackers to distract people from my speech’s many flaws (see, tiny gold fish were a key part of that novel, too) that I finally had every ingredient I needed. Oh, yeah, I also came across some excellent advice on a hard boiled website about how all noir protagonists must die.  Think of this not as a spoiler, but more like a heartfelt promise.

And the importance of this cannot be overstated. This gave me the momentum I needed to finish. Understanding the poor clown was doomed, I actually typed as if there was a danger of us both never getting to the end of the story in time. And because of this, I cranked out the whole thing out in just over a week, thinking up ways to kill cops one through nine as I drove to work, then hammering out their demise on the way home. For the first time ever, I actually wanted to get pulled over. I was definitely writing more than fast enough.

I finished the story one beautiful Sunday morning over corn flakes, then, on a whim, typed the search words “humor,” “gruesome,” “crime,” and “circus balls” into Google. Three out of four ain’t bad, and a combination miraculously turned up in a Comet Press call for submissions like a long-lost love. They mercifully snapped up my ugly baby, and I’ve been smiling and dreaming of folding cops in half ever since. Thank you, Cleveland, and good night.

(soap squirts from my hand and is gone before I can slap my foot over the drain)