So it is with Bulkington. He arrives home after a long whaling voyage, and immediately signs on with another, back out onto the tempestuous ocean. Not because he loves the sea particularly, but because he must, for some reason, be at sea, there being some intolerable pain that assaults him on the land.
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Growing Up Metal: The Story Of A Fan Who (Kind Of) Rocked is now available on Amazon.
Kindle: $5.99
Print: $15.99
I'm psyched! And now, for one naked ask.
Please buy a copy.
You’re a loyal reader of the blog. You’ve loved or at least read (skimmed?) my essays, my posting about sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal. Some of you for years.
Thank you.
You know I don’t charge a thing to read anything I’ve written. There’s no annoying pop-up ads, no asks to join my non-existent Patreon, no paywalls, no tip jar. Nothing.
I plan to keep it that way
But I have an ask.
Please buy Growing Up Metal.
If you don’t like heavy metal, you probably know someone who does. Or who likes memoir. Or who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Or struggled to grow up, struggled in his or her marriage. And made it to the other side, with a story that doesn't pull punches.
Read it, review it. Send me feedback. Tell me if you love it, tell me it sucks. Tell me if it moved you, or didn’t.
What is it?
My story from teenager to adult, full and largely unexpurgated. The Truth, the facts of my existence and what I learned from it all, how I listened, and changed. With a fantastic soundtrack.
The story of heavy metal, filtered through me.
The story of a bygone era of time that I tried to bring back to life.
Even a couple dribs and drabs of sword-and-sorcery. Not much, but not zero.
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• I worked eight years as a full-time reporter for a daily newspaper, writing and publishing stories every day, Monday-Friday.
• I spent 18 years working in healthcare publishing, during which I interviewed hundreds of experts for industry newsletters. And hosted hundreds more on a podcast. I wrote and told all of their stories.
• I spent 25 years covering high school football. In that time I spoke to hundreds of players and coaches, likely thousands. I witnessed great victories, painful defeats, and stood in the pressbox and the stands capturing every detail, sometimes in the driving rain or shivering in brutal cold. And cataloged them all in the pages of a newspaper.
• I’ve told the stories of my grandfathers and their incredible service in two major world wars.
• I’ve told the story of a former colleague who passed away far too early, a keynote speech I delivered to a crowd of more than 1,200.
• I’ve written hundreds of essays, book reviews, and author profiles, here on The Silver Key and for websites like Goodman Games, Black Gate, SFFaudio.com, and The Cimmerian.
• I wrote a non-fiction book about the lives of sword-and-sorcery authors, telling the weird story of the creation of a niche subgenre of fantasy fiction. A long and interesting story, start to finish, as told in Flame and Crimson.
I learned something from every person I researched or interviewed. Even if it was someone I thought I knew well, my knowledge of them deepened. I’m incredibly grateful to have had this amazing career. No regrets, I loved it all. I would do it all over again.
But something was missing.
Where was my story in all of this?
Did I even have one worth telling?
For most of my life I’ve considered my story, if it all, as irrelevant, inconsequential. Who was I, next to a star football player, an influential selectman, the chief of police? Next to men and women who wrote influential works of fiction, or fought in wars? Or played in heavy metal bands?
But with the passage of time and (slow) accumulation of wisdom I came to realize a profound truth: That every life is a story. That anyone who has lived a life—even one marked heavily by disappointment and failure—has a story in them, if they are brave enough to speak about it, or set it to paper. That my life, which I formerly had not bothered to examine—and if you had asked me just a few years ago would have said was not worthy of examination—might have something of value. That it was a unique story, and therefore one worth telling.
For I too lived. Foolishly, tentatively, averagely. But also loudly, passionately, and colorfully, in my own way. In no small part because I grew up listening to the best damned music genre for pale teenage boys our planet has ever seen.
Heavy Metal.
I was part of a unique culture, during a unique period of time that shall never again exist. I was never on the stage, but I was, and remain, a fan, passionately devoted to an utterly unique and misunderstood genre of music.
I don’t look the part, and never have, but heavy metal resonates in my soul, with the same volume of an amplified arena concert.
The fans’ story is an unwritten chapter in the rich and colorful history of heavy metal. We’ve got Ozzy’s story, and Gene Simmons’, Rob Halford’s, Bruce Dickinson’s, and hundreds more…but what about those who bought their albums, attended their concerts, and followed their exploits on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball?
Eventually I came to realize this was a story worth telling. It was time to tell the story of a fan … who happened to be me.
I started with a difficult and subjective question for which I did not have an answer—how much of my story, vs. how much of metal’s? But as I began to draft, and redraft, the decision made itself: it would be my story, with metal as the backdrop. The soundtrack to my life, if you will.
My story needed to be told, finally, after a lifetime of telling everyone else’s.
Growing Up Metal is not a heavy metal history. If you’re looking for that, look elsewhere. There are many other worthy metal histories written by authors with far greater knowledge of the genre’s depth and breadth than my own. I’ll happily send you my recommendations.
I think in Growing Up Metal you will find something unprecedented, and unexpected.
Growing Up Metal is the story about how I grew from boy to adult with heavy metal as my constant companion. I tell the story of heavy metal, but heavily filtered through my experiences and perspective. Growing Up Metal is not a sordid tell-all, but it’s intensely personal. Revealing, and raw, and real, which was not easy for someone who spent most his life wearing masks of one sort or another. Who was I, underneath the Gene Simmons face paint? Writing it was incredibly therapeutic, and transformative. Difficult … but also a lot of fun. I did a lot of dumb things, over-the-top, ridiculous things, and lived to tell the tale.
If you’re going to write a memoir you can’t half-ass it, deflect the spotlight, paint over your faults, tell lies or comforting untruths. Books are a serious business that when told truthfully and at length put their subject under the microscope.
You can’t hide in a memoir, and if you do, it will suck. No one wants to read a pale copy, sharp edges shorn off and colors muted.
I didn’t hide writing Growing Up Metal. My life is in its pages.
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In my younger days I lived a life of consumption. I voraciously consumed music, books, and experiences, at the expense of never looking inside. Today we’re constantly bombarded with external stimulus. The smart phone is if nothing else the greatest distraction machine ever invented. “Doom scrolling” has entered the vernacular.
Writing Growing Up Metal afforded me a space to stop and reflect.
The great mythographers Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell said that the real frontier we are called to explore is within. In Growing Up Metal I excavated the events of my past. I reflected on the life I’ve lived, who I was, and who I became, after many trials and false starts and failures.
In the end I was surprised to find it resembled something of The Hero’s Journey, though it did not set out as one.
Heavy metal has an interesting story. It rose, it fell, and was reborn from ruins … a story which strangely parallels my own. All of that is in there. Triumph, failure, crash, and coming to life again.
Each chapter ends with an “amplifier” sidebar in which I digress from my life and discuss the history of metal, or its themes and importance, in more detail. If you remember the 80s and 90s and life before the internet, how we bought and consumed music before Spotify and YouTube, you’ll get mainlined nostalgia for a brief point in time that no longer exists. If you grew up in the New England region, you’ll recognize a lot of the venues where the events unfold. Some of these venues have been bulldozed into the ground, which might be for the best.
I was further spurred to write this book with the advent of generative AI and large language models (LLMs). These are machines that “create” using machine algorithms and aggregated text others have written. LLMs are powerful tools which I believe have a useful purpose… but not in creative spaces. I draw a firm, unwavering line when it comes to using AI for the arts. After all, the life I lived was profoundly human, full of awkward romance and painful mistakes, occasional catastrophes and towering triumphs. Of a modest sort, but not to me. The writing needed to be mine. It’s 100% authentic meat space, and I was adamant my voice would be mine, not a machine.
I hope you enjoy Growing Up Metal, learn something from it, and perhaps recognize something of yourself in its pages. And if you’re at the right age, at a pivotal time in your life, it may even help you make different choices, ones I might have made to change the course of my life.
Growing Up Metal is complete. I hope it strikes a heavy power chord among metal fans, maybe something akin to the shock we feel when Judas Priest starts into The Hellion/Electric Eye.
I think it rocks.
If you’ve liked what I’ve had to say here over the many years, please consider picking up a copy. Consider it my personal mix tape to you.
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| The winner. Fuck yeah! |
(Note: The following is the lead item in this week's Arcane Arts. I also cover REH, Jane Yolen, 70s horror, and Mike Grell's Warlord. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox)Unfortunate cover blurb.
Metal is vast. Metal is diverse. Metal is sprawling. The number of subgenres is staggering … more than 70, are you kidding? And to be honest, a little stupid. Drone metal. Funeral doom. Djent metal. Some of the finer points make sword-and-sorcery vs. heroic fantasy look like high school debate club.
And so I don’t think it’s possible to write an absolutely definitive history of heavy metal. And even if you could, who would be interested in such a thing? If you like doom are you likely also a fan of funk metal or Christian metal?
This past weekend I finished reading an attempt at a comprehensive history, Andrew O’Neill’s A History of Heavy Metal. I’d describe it as breezy, entertaining, fairly well written. But also, quite biased and therefore incomplete. An ostensible history shouldn’t ignore bands that the author does not like. O’Neill hates glam metal, so we get 10 pages of why it sucks … except for maybe Appetite For Destruction. He also has little use for Anthrax and Megadeth (Dave Mustaine’s nasally voice grates on him) so they’re largely ignored too, despite their considerable footprint.
For what it’s worth I recommend A History of Heavy Metal as a breezy, sometimes entertaining read that filled in a few corners for me. Black and death metal, mainly, and a lot of bands I’ve never heard of.
What he wrote was fine… but it’s not what I want to read. Or write. I’d rather go deep than broad. Curated instead of encyclopedic.
This is a roundabout way of explaining how I ended up writing a heavy metal memoir. We have histories. We’ve got Sound of the Beast and Louder than Hell and O’Neill’s book. We have information: Videos, podcasts, even, a map. We’ve got a million stories of the bands and performers themselves.
We don’t need another Flame and Crimson for heavy metal.
So, I wrote something quite different. A story from one fan’s perspective—my own. My life, with heavy metal as the backdrop.
My memoir will only focus on the handful of metal genres I like. But I’m not writing a history. So if you’re looking for a treatise on Unblack Metal (a real subgenre, by the way) you’ll need to look elsewhere.
But if you’re looking for one fan’s utterly unique story, maybe you’ll like this. August is getting closer.
Note: I use the plural “we” in this essay even though motivations for why anyone writes vary widely. I suppose I could just say “I” … but I strongly suspect others feel the same way. “We” facilitates connection and understanding.
If I go more than a day, maybe two, without writing, I start to feel ghostly. Incomplete, absent something vital I need to function as a human.
Writing infuses me with vitality. When I hit publish I am flush with spirit. My day is instantly better.
Pressing publish is key. Writing for an audience is qualitatively different than writing for yourself, for example a gratitude journal or a private essay that will never be read by anyone other than yourself. I do that kind of writing, and it’s important. But it’s ultimately not why I write.
The writing I enjoy combines subject matter mastery, self-discovery, and personal expression. I want people to experience the passion I feel for weird art, heavy metal, reading, and pop culture—the arcane arts that interest me. I hope my readers might learn something along the way, the distillation of my research and insight. And, ultimately (and maybe somewhat pretentiously, though I don’t really think so) I hope something I write might transform something in you. The way you understand the world, perhaps even yourself.
I don’t write fiction, but in my reading of fiction and biography of fiction writers I’ve come to see fiction as a window into the soul by writers who wish to be understood. Charles Saunders wrote blood-and-thunder stories of sword-and-sorcery adventure, but the character of Imaro said something about the author. Even writing “merely” to entertain says something of the writer, perhaps of the dissatisfying mundane world he or she inhabits or that entertainment and story provides something vital we need as humans.
For 99.9% of us, writing is not a vocation to pursue if you want to get rich. You can make a living off of it, though it won’t be the aesthete in a well-furnished Victorian garret romanticism sort of writing perpetrated by the Hallmark channel. Businesses need people who can write (or did, pre-LLMs. Now they need people who can prompt). I have a good job that is +/- 50% writing full time. It pays the bills, and sometimes I can even put a little something of myself into otherwise dry and technical pieces of the healthcare mid-revenue cycle.
I wish I could write creatively, like I do here, full-time. But it’s not happening. If I had to survive on what I do in the creative side of my life I’d be living under a bridge. I’m very fortunate that I don’t need income from Flame and Crimson or freelance S&S pieces to pay my mortgage.
But I do need to be understood. So I’m taking that a step farther with a very personal new book.
I’ve got a heavy metal-infused memoir in the edit/cover design stages. It will be published this year. I expect it to sell +/- 50 copies, though I plan to promote the heck out of it wherever I’m able. Not because I’m in it to make money. If it was about making money I’d be writing freelance blog posts and white papers for some healthcare website.
I want people to understand the life I’ve lived, the music I loved, the struggles I’ve endured, and still have, from time-to-time. I grew up with social anxiety and painful introversion. Being labelled as an introvert was once (and in some corners, still) used a pejorative. These traits harmed my relationships and put a few limits on my career.
But today I accept this part of me, perhaps even cherish it. If I were not an introvert I might not have ever felt the need to set pen to paper. I can say things in writing that I have a hard time saying out loud. Writing about my experiences helped me heal, and I hope perhaps the act of reading them might help others as well.
That’s the power of writing.
So yes, I write to be understood. Maybe you do too.
Keep writing.
Happy New Year!
I can get caught up in unproductive routines, doom loop cycles, and this time of year, overeating and overdrinking. I appreciate the fresh start the year affords.
It’s time to get after it in 2026. Renewed discipline, but also optimism, commitment, engagement with the world. I want to get outside more, walk, touch grass.
My reading is off to a good start with Jack, a biography of Jack London. I’m about a third of the way through and am greatly enjoying learning about a favorite author who typically falls in my top 10. These days I seem to be gravitating more and more toward nonfiction. The world, and its past, are so strange and full of wonder that fiction, even the weird, seems pedestrian in comparison. I do think both should be read, as fiction activates different parts of the brain, and good fiction connects us to myth and story in a way most non-fiction cannot. And I am starting to itch for a Lord of the Rings re-read. I like and agree with some recent advice from a booktuber to “read for quality, not quantity.” It does seem best to me to know a book a depth that it shapes you, changes you, rather than to read as many titles as you can for breadth and only be able to recall them shallowly, if at all.
I am going to publish my heavy metal memoir. This book bridges both fiction and non-fiction; it is the unadorned facts of my life, and observations and insights on the music that shaped it, but also told with what I hope is a driving and engaging narrative voice found in good fiction. I can’t wait to share it with the world and hope it finds readers for whom it resonates.
Speaking of heavy metal I’ve got a couple of Iron Maiden concerts on the docket for this year.
I will in all likelihood be hosting one final heavy metal themed party here at my house, over the summer, with a live band. For years this was an annual event. Eight years after the last in 2018 I plan to bring it back one final time, a "retirement sucks" tour worthy of Ozzy Osbourne.
We’ve also got a trip to Alaska lined up, land and sea, which I’m greatly looking forward to. At 52 I am very aware of my steady advance into middle age and want to see and experience more of the world while I still can.
What plans do you have for 2026? What behaviors do you hope to adopt, or drop?
BTW I’m debating more posts like this, where I’m just sort of rambling not about any particular book or movie or author or trend. I enjoy letting my mind wander without needing to stop and reference facts or cite passages.
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| T-800s like it here... but people too. |
Unfortunately some of it appears to be robots, likely using my posts to train LLMs. But robots are only part of the story. There are also a lot of fine folks who seem to like what I have to say here on the Silver Key. Lots of returning visitors, lots of comments. For which I remain very grateful.
I’ve got a lot to be grateful for on the writing front in 2025.
2026 will be the year of my heavy metal memoir. I spent a lot of time working on it behind the scenes. I shared it with three readers who appear in it and have taken their advice into consideration. Made a few changes. Re-read it after 3 months and rewrote quite a bit.
The writing is done, I can’t make it any better nor tell the story I want to tell any more effectively. Next will be editing and cover design.
I’m in the process of helping my friend Tom Barber publish his memoir via Kindle Direct Publishing. I can’t wait to share more details about Tom’s book, which details the depths of his alcohol addiction, his travels out west, all lavishly illustrated with his own artwork.
KDP is pretty easy to use and I’m near certain I will be using the same platform for my book.
It was a productive year for me on The Silver Key. This post is my 89th, the most I’ve published in a year since 2022, and my fourth highest annual output all-time. And as noted, traffic went through the roof.
People are somehow still visiting this archaic corner of cyberspace. As of this writing (Saturday, Dec. 20) I’ve had 71,000 views in 2025, up from 45,000 in 2024 and 29,000 in 2023. I expected to see traffic decline as folks use AI to find answers or information without going out to websites, but that’s not the case here.
I published broadly on heavy metal, sword-and-sorcery, reading trends, Arthuriana, and the war for our attention. All topics that interest me. All seemed to resonate.
My most popular post by far was a guest blogger writing about Rob Zombie.
Let’s take a look at the 20 most popular posts of 2025.
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Anyway, if you’ve gotten this far thanks for reading the blog, today and all year long. I always welcome your comments and suggestions.
Merry Christmas and I wish you a very fine 2026.
I’m a busy dude. I imagine most men and women with adult commitments are too, so no excuses.
But this past 10 days has seen me fly to Texas for a company retreat, then from there fly straight to Rhode Island for a guy’s weekend. Then back to a busy work schedule Monday, helping out my ailing Dad with a few things, and I leave tonight on a flight to Tennessee. It’s not easy being me … but in all honesty my liver and my sanity are paying the price.
That has left me no time for blogging. Which sounds like a small price to pay, but when I don’t write here I start getting a bit twitchy. Blogging about all things fantastic provides me some creative outlet that I can’t quite articulate, just that it exists, and I feel its absence acutely.
So here’s a few interesting items to tide me over until I can write something more substantial.
1. My friend Ken Lizzi has a new S&S novel out, Cesar the Bravo. I’ve known Ken mainly through online interactions but got to spend some time with him in Cross Plains TX in 2023 for Robert E. Howard Days. We spoke on a pirate S&S panel together and drank Shiner Bock while watching Master and Commander. Support S&S, support contemporary authors doing good work, and check out Ken’s book. Bravo, Ken (#dadjoke). Learn more here or order on Amazon. BTW you should follow Ken's blog.
2. I continue to work on my heavy metal memoir. I’ve shown it to a few friends and gotten some good feedback. I also sent it or pieces of it to a handful of specialty publishers back in June and was met with deafening silence, so that means in all likelihood it will be self-published. I’m more than good with this; traditional publishing is, with some exceptions, a losing proposition. Writing is brutally hard, and when you’re done with agonizing draft after draft and self-doubt and the realization that you suck as a writer but you keep going and grinding and finally have something readable, the work is just beginning. Because you have to be found in a sea of other books, millions of which are being published in a year. Marketing is the hard part and publishers don’t do this; it’s on the author. Which I will do. I’m sure the memoir will sink beneath the waves after I publish it, but that’s not why I am writing it. I literally need to write this, and I’m pretty happy with how its shaping up.
3. Carl Jung is the man. I am working my way through Man and His Symbols, which is generally accorded his most accessible work. It’s an odd book; only the first section is his, the rest is written by Jungian disciples/believers or whatever term you want to apply. But his stuff is, to risk hyperbole and hero-worship, a bit of genius. Here’s a few choice quotes; I’ve been writing them down feverishly as I read:
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It is true, however, that in recent times civilized man has acquired a certain amount of will power, which he can apply where he pleases. He has learned to do his work efficiently without having recourse to chanting and drumming to hypnotize him into the state of doing. He can even dispense with a daily prayer for divine aid. He can carry out what he proposes to do, and he can apparently translate his ideas into action without a hitch, whereas the primitive seems to be hampered at each step by fears, superstitions, and other unseen obstacles to action. The motto “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is the superstition of modern man. Yet in order to sustain his creed, contemporary man pays the price in a remarkable lack of introspection. He is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food—and, above all, a large array of neuroses.
***
A man likes to believe that he is the master of his soul. But as long as he is unable to control his moods and emotions, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into his arrangements and decisions, he is certainly not his own master.
***
But all such attempts have proven singularly ineffective, and will do so as long as we try to convince ourselves and the world that it is only they (i.e., our opponents) who are wrong. It would be much more to the point for us to make a serious attempt to recognize our own shadow and its nefarious doings. If we could see our shadow (the dark side of our nature), we should be immune to any moral and mental infection and insinuation.
