I am too busy to blog right now but here's three things to know...

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:

***

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.

Stephen King's Cujo, a review

I believe that, whenever he pens his last novel and his complete literary corpus can be properly appraised, Stephen King will go down as more than just a shock horror author with popular appeal.

King does nasty shocks well—see “Survivor Type” for the ultimate example—but there is more going on in most of his stories than mere horror and spectacle. And a lot more authorial skill. King understands what makes people tick, both internally and in interpersonal relationships, and makes people come alive on the printed page. 

While he may lack the grand ideas of an H.P. Lovecraft or the atmosphere and style of an Edgar Allan Poe, King is a superior character writer.  We understand his universe of fear, even at its wildest, and we feel the same emotions as his characters, because we recognize ourselves in them.

Sandwiched between The Dead Zone (1979) and Firestarter (1980), The Running Man (1982) and The Gunslinger (1982)—stories of protagonists with supernatural mind powers, some set in far-flung futures or postapocalyptic other worlds—Cujo (1981) is in comparison earthly and corporeal, with only traces of the supernatural creeping in at the edges.

The story is set in Castle Rock, King’s finely-wrought fictitious small town in Maine that is home to all manner of horror. But Cujo is not just small-town horror, it’s small-time horror. A story of a rabid dog, and the damage human weakness can wreak on a family.

Horrors sneak up on us when we least expect them. When everything looks fine, and settled, and placid, boredom sets in. We seek novelty, excitement. The opportunity presents itself, and we take it.

Innocence is shattered.

We can try to trace back the reasons why, but often it’s just ill luck.

Or it seems to be.

A married woman, bored and looking ahead at a prosaic and unfulfilling life as a housewife, falls for a transient tennis instructor in a chance meeting.

A massive Saint Bernard sticks its snout into a hole connected to an underground cave and disturbs a bat, and suffers a bite on its snout. Says King, “He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.” Interestingly however Cujo seems to become more than just thoughtless animal inflicted with disease; his eyes are red and full of rage, possessed of something like malice, a murderous intent.

These (random?) events set in motion four days of terror and a relentless finish to the novel. On a placid, hot week in August it all comes to a head as Cujo begins a murderous rampage, dripping foam and blood. A car mechanic and a cop fall victim to his deadly jaws.

Cujo is a fine, tightly plotted little novel and packs some genuine scares, many of them lurking in the closet of four-year-old Tad Trenton. These scenes reminded me of King’s “The Boogeyman,” for my money one of his most terrifying short stories. I recall being terrified of the dark as a kid, and seeing strange shadows move in the light cast by my feeble nightlight, and shivering under the covers. I felt them again here.

I enjoyed the return of Frank Dodd, a serial killer/sexual predator cop who is identified by Johnny Smith, the clairvoyant protagonist of The Dead Zone. Dodd commits suicide before he can be brought to justice, and his ghost continues to haunt Castle Rock in the pages of Cujo. This adds a bit of interesting inter-novel world building to the book.

Tad has premonitions of Cujo/Dodd in the shapes in the recesses of his closet, but he also senses there is something wrong within his seemingly idyllic family. Tad’s father, Vic, pens his son “Monster Words” to keep away the bad dreams and reads them to his son nightly in a totemic ritual.

But words aren’t enough to keep away the real monsters.

Donna and Tad are trapped in a Pinto in the blazing August heat as Cujo waits them out (good thing the 200-pound dog didn’t ram the rear-end of the car, else it would have exploded). Donna she watches her son slowly slip into convulsions from dehydration. Eventually it comes down to it—she must emerge from the confines of the car to wage a hopeless battle against her deepest fear.

Donna’s final showdown with Cujo in a dusty driveway armed with a taped and splintered bat approaches the showdown of Eowyn and the Witch King on the fields of Pelennor. I love this bit of epic description by King; “high wine and deep iron” was unexpected:

Donna cried out in a high, breaking voice and brought the bat down on Cujo’s hindquarters. Something else broke. She heard it. The dog bellowed and tried to scramble away but she was on it again, swinging, pounding, screaming. Her head was high wine and deep iron. The world danced. She was the harpies, the Weird Sisters, she was all vengeance—not for herself, but for what had been done to her boy.

What has been done to her boy… is it Cujo or her own domestic horror come home to roost?

Opening up to the Weird

Despite my lifelong interest in all things fantastic I’ve always been extraordinarily skeptical of the supernatural.

I scoff at ghost stories. I have explanations for everyone else’s unexplained phenomena. I have a hard time believing in the existence of a Christian God or pagan gods. I’ve heard others talk about their experiences and listen politely, while internally knocking holes in their stories and wondering what trauma or defect led them to said belief. 

I still have my doubts. Perhaps cold hard materiality does reign, and all else is illusion. But lately I’ve begun to open up to possibilities of something more.

This is no big revelation caused by a life-changing event. I didn’t see a ghost in my hallway this Halloween, or a zombie rise from a moldering grave. 

It’s just the slow awakening of some new sense in me that I’ve been missing something.

I believe, in some undefined, abstract, still to be explored way, in the supernatural. Because I think without it, we’re missing something vital.

I’m not talking about chain rattling ghosts or UFOs, but something spiritual that is innate to humans and probably necessary for our functioning.

The work of Carl Jung has been my catalyst. We all of us operate with an unseen system, the unconscious. Beyond that, a collective unconscious, archetypes encoded in our brain and nervous system, inherited from millennia of memory.

There is a reason why the Heroes Journey persists across vast gulfs of time, transcends cultures. It’s inexplicable as a physical phenomenon but it’s no less real. We feel its power.

Art cannot be reduced to its component atoms. A scientist can study a fleck of paint, or a letter or a word, but the artists’ whole finished art is something categorically different than its components, subjective, irreducible, ineffable. Stories are real, they have power.

That is a form of magic that is real.

I used to believe in something more than the physical, as perhaps most children do. Then I stopped, perhaps somewhere around high school. School and life and work, failures and disappointments (and deadlines and commitments, to quote one Bob Seger) wrung that out of me.

I’m letting it back in, after nearly four decades. But just a crack. I’m not throwing open the doors of irrationality--there is no chance of that happening. I am just admitting that some aspects of life are beyond rational explanations, that the universe cannot be explained by the movement of subatomic particles.

Here I am, at 52, open to irrationality and accepting the possibility of the weird. Faintly embarrassing but that’s my old sensible self talking. I never saw this coming… which I find wonderful and weird and inexplicable in and of itself. 

The Call of Halloween

Carved Sunday, ready to light up the night...

Halloween always has been and still remains my favorite holiday. Christmas gives it a hell of a run but ultimately loses to Samhain.

Why?

There are zero expectations with Halloween. No dinner parties to host. No gift-giving or spending inordinate amounts of money. I would like to spend more on candy but we get no more than 20 kids visiting our home, located on a relatively isolated cul-de-sac. So I’m "forced" to eat the candy we annually overbuy.

Horror is celebrated. The weird is celebrated. Being weird is welcomed, for at least one day a year.

You can put on a costume and become someone else.

I always find myself experiencing a familiar stir about mid-September: The call to horror. I read a lot—though not as much as I’d like—and one secret to reading is cutting out television. But on Halloween I always up my movie quotient with the macabre.

As mentioned I watched Black Sabbath. I watched the old 1979 ‘Salem’s Lot. A recent film, Oculus (2013).

Last night I watched Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. 

I loved it. I’ve never seen this one before, based on the title I assumed it was going to be wildly over the top, like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was over the top… but 70s British reserved, slow-paced by our modern standards, over the top. Very Hammer, gothic, moody, fun, and sexy. Caroline Munro is a smoke show.

I loved the non-formula, the awkwardness, even the objective spots of poor film-making, because it’s blessedly different. The vampire formula is tweaked a bit, with the blood suckers leaving their victims an aged husk, beautiful young women reduced to corpses of crones. It’s got some great sword-fighting, an interesting sword-and-sorcery/Solomon Kane-esque protagonist with a fun hunchback sidekick. And some well-placed humor, including this sexually charged quip delivered with an over-the-top non-nuance that had me laughing out loud. Forgive the poor quality.

I’m reading horror too, Stephen King’s Cujo. A classic monster story of a harmless Saint Bernard gone mad after a bat bite on the snout infects him with rabies. I haven’t read this one since I was probably, oh, 13 or so? So while I know the basic beats, it feels new to me. I had forgotten about Donna Trenton’s affair, and to King’s credit this adds a complexity I hadn’t seen before. I think Cujo and the monster in the closet are symbols of the monster in us, something terrible that can be awakened in the right (i.e., wrong) circumstance. Tad can sense something in his wrong in his idyllic home that he can’t articulate.

I love decorating for Halloween, too.

I added a new skeleton to my front porch this year, given life with a black cloak and a shepherd hook. Hanging there beside the stairs it might touch your arm with a bony finger as you ascend the stairs … or maybe that was the wind.

I carved jack-o-lanterns with my daughter on Sunday. At age 23 she still maintains the tradition of humoring her old man, though I know she enjoys it. And it keeps away the evil spirits when the veil is at its thinnest.

I cannot express how much joy this brings me and how lucky I am to have a loving family.

I’ve got Hannah reading Pet Sematary. She is a budding horror aficionado who insisted I watch The Haunting of Hill House TV series earlier this year. I think it was started by her teenage obsession with Stranger Things, another show she encouraged me to watch (and I enjoyed; more on that here).

Hannah was later inspired to read Shirley Jackson’s novel and now I’ve given her the gift of her first King. Maybe movies can inspire readers, though she’s always been one.

We can read horror any time we want, we can recommend films and books on any given Tuesday, but Halloween gives me an excuse. And I love it. 

I will break out some Poe, the master, before and/or on Halloween itself. Until then here’s one of my favorites.

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee--

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love--

I and my Annabel Lee--

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me--

Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we--

Of many far wiser than we--

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side

Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,

In the sepulchre there by the sea--

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Strange Ways, Ace Frehley

Easy choice this week ... in honor of the eternal memory of Ace Frehley, buried this week in Brooklyn. "Strange Ways" appeared on KISS' second album Hotter Than Hell. 

Ace wrote it, and I love it.

I've heard him play this one many times in concert, including as it turns out his second to last ever performance (Tupelo Theater, Derry NH, Sept. 4, 2025) which I was proud to have attended. 

Moral of the story: Don't ever skip the opportunity to see your aging rock heroes when they come around, because it may be your last chance.

I have not heard this particular recording prior, live with Peter Criss 1995, post first KISS breakup. Cool.

Seems impromptu. A bit rough around the edges.

Definitely awesome. Especially his solo starting around 3:15.

RIP Spaceman.

Addendum: Seems you have to click through to Youtube to watch this. Which I recommend. But in case you're feeling lazy I'm also posting the fine studio recording.

We need tastemakers

When I first started getting into sword-and-sorcery fiction, the internet was a fledgling, creaky, place. Charming, but impractical. Think bare-bones HTML websites and USENET and bulletin boards. Interesting, but not much help in finding what you were looking for, save by happy accident. Encyclopedias still had a place in this world. 

So, I read the introductions of books, written by real people.

I found L. Sprague de Camp’s Swords & Sorcery (Pyramid, 1963) and read the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. I sought them out, and in so doing found authors like Poul Anderson and Jack Vance.

Lin Carter, champion S&S enthusiast.

The best of these early tastemakers was probably Lin Carter, whose glowing and enthusiastic (and occasionally erudite) introductions to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series led me down many a merry chase. Carter (June 9, 1930 – February 7, 1988) was long deceased, but was posthumously leading me toward many other fine authors like Lord Dunsany and E.R. Eddison and William Morris.

As the internet began to bloom I found the likes of Steve Tompkins at The Cimmerian and articles by Howard Andrew Jones at Flashing Swords and Black Gate. I read about authors like Harold Lamb and Karl Edward Wagner in their essays and sought them out. 

In hindsight I was lucky. I was steered by people who knew what they were talking about. 

In recent years I’ve been steered toward new finds by the likes of Morgan Holmes and G.W. Thomas and Deuce Richardson. Today I try to do that here and carry on the tradition. I am always very pleased when I read comments like this one, which I just got on a recent post about Darryl Schweitzer’s We Are All Legends. 

I love hanging around this blog, for several reason but especially for a post like this. I had never heard of Schweitzer or seen his works in the wild until now. Seeing a "new author" to me is always exciting. Immediately ordered from Schweitzer's Ebay store.

We need people we know and trust and respect to give good recommendations. 

One person who understands this better than most is marketing guru Seth Godin, who I can’t recommend enough for works like The Purple Cow (look, I’m playing tastemaker!). Godin views tastemakers and curators as leaders who define culture by selecting and combining experiences for a specific audience, helping to build trust and navigate an overwhelming flood of content. In his view, tastemakers and curators stand in contrast to algorithms and mass platforms, which tend to promote a race to the bottom by simply surfacing what is popular. 

I love this. Algorithms push us toward an average and mean, and who wants to be average, or mean (as in, not nice)? 

Curation and tastemaking is a place where editors of S&S publications can step up. Set the direction. Show some taste. Differentiate yourself from AI slop. Give me the names of authors and artists whose work has moved you, and tell me why. You might convince me to give them a try.

I don’t want ChatGPT or Instagram algorithms steering me dully, without thought, toward whomever and wherever their programming tells me to go. Which is probably toward cat videos and thirst traps.

Give me odd, weird, and sympatico people.

We need tastemakers.

Who are yours? 

Of Black Sabbath (film) and Ace Frehley

With the Halloween season upon us I had the urge last night to settle in and watch some horror. I spent the better part of 10 minutes scrolling through hundreds of titles on demand before landing on Black Sabbath (1964).

I like modern horror but my preference is the older stuff. Not so much the classic black and white Lon Cheney films, but rather 60-80s, Hammer and on up. I enjoy the slow pace, the gothic visuals, the garish colors, the practical special effects and real props. Black Sabbath had it all thanks to the talents of director Mario Bava.

This turned out to be a pretty good little trilogy of films wrapped up in one production, woven together with Boris Karloff as narrator. I love Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt and their ilk, in collections of shorts you’ll often find more creativity, unexpected twists and bad ends often not possible in a feature length film.

Black Sabbath is full of nasty little shocks. All three shorts were good. The first, “The Drop of Water,” is the creepiest and features a corpse with a truly terrifying frozen death-mask face, but the third, a nice little vampire story, was my favorite. I enjoy it when the monsters sometimes win. I too would not have resisted the beautiful female vampire of "The Wurdulak,” which seems to have inspired at least one scene from ‘Salem’s Lot. The film is visually stunning with beautiful and eerie landscapes and gothic set pieces, like this:

After watching the film I did a bit of research and discovered the Americanized version was neutered of some of its bloodier elements, and the middle story, “The Telephone,” badly altered to remove the main character’s backstory as a prostitute in a lesbian relationship. The Italians were a lot less prudish in the early 60s, it seems.

In hindsight these elements make the plot hang together far better so I’ll probably seek out the original at some point.

Recommended.

***

As I was writing this the news hit that Ace Frehley passed away.

I’ve seen Ace in concert many times, including twice this year alone. He was diminished as all 70s rockers are but still putting on good performances and rocking to the end. Ace was the most charismatic member of the band and its most talented musician. He wrote a few of their classic songs (“Cold Gin” and “Parasite," among others), lent the band an early swagger that made KISS so badass in the 70s, and of course, was responsible for many classic solos delivered with an inimitable, unique style. Loose and jangly, big rings banging off the guitar, but always fitted to the song itself.

Ace was a notorious drinker and drug user and nearly died back in the early 1980s in a car wreck while driving under the influence. He was not the best bandmate and later got into pissing matches with Paul and Gene that lasted to the end of his life. But most fans loved him. I count myself in that group. Watch KISS’ classic interview with Tom Snyder, Ace steals the show with his one-liners and trademark cackling laugh. I also recommend his autobiography No Regrets. How he lived this long is a mystery; the stories of him being driven around New York in the back seat of a limousine with John Belushi and spilling out into club after club for one drunken escapade after the next are legend.

My favorite Ace memory is seeing him in 1994 at The Underground in Lowell after pounding a 12-pack of Zima with my buddy Wayne. We were hammered and so was Ace. I later told this story to my very amused friends at work, left for a long weekend, and returned to find my office plastered with cutout pictures of Ace and Zima bottles. 

Ace would have approved.

You may not like KISS but you cannot deny they did their brand of party rock better than anyone. The number of hits they wrote dwarf the output of most rock bands. Dozens of talented guitarists admit that Ace was the guy that got them to pick up their axe in the first place, among them Slash and Dimedag Darrell.

Say a prayer for his soul and his family and loved ones.

Ace Frehley lead guitar! The coolest.

Addendum: For anyone feeling nostalgic for a lost Ace, I HIGHLY recommend this great interview… he talks about The Elder, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, his relationship with the band members, getting into music, alcohol use, and none of it is mean spirited. He’s full of laughter in it: