Once upon a time, dinosaurs walked the earth, or so evidence concludes.  The same can be said of the literary world.  The salient days of Hemmingway, Mailer and Kerouac are behind us now.  Back before genre classification, these artists walked the earth, trembling the earth with mighty footfalls.

I remember my introduction to Norman Mailer.  It was a rainy day outside and I was feeling gloomy and bored.  I wanted to read something outside my usual scope of enjoyment.  Horror can be fun, but a full plate of it all the time makes the taste buds grow uninspired.  I wanted something dark and gritty.  I dumped boxes of books onto my bed (I was always collecting large quantities of books from yard sales and such) and read the back covers of maybe forty books.  I stopped when I read this:

Tough Guys Don’t Dance is the story of Tim Madden, an unsuccessful writer addicted to bourbon, cigarettes, and blonde, careless women with money. On the twenty-fourth morning after the decampment of his wife, Patty Lareine, he awakens with a hangover, considerable sexual excitement, and, on his upper arm, a red tattoo bearing a name from the past. Of the night before, he remembers practically nothing. What he soon learns is that the front passenger seat of his Porsche is soaked with blood and that in a secluded corner of his marijuana stash in a nearby woods rests a blonde head, severed at the throat.
Is Madden therefore a murderer? He has no way of knowing. As in many novels of crime, the narrative centers on violence—physical, sexual, and emotional—but these elements move in their orbits through a rich constellation of character as Madden tries to reconstruct the missing hours of a terrible evening. In the course of this in-quiry a bizarre and vividly etched gallery of characters reappears to him as in a dream—ex-prizefighters, sexual junkies, mediums, former cons, a police chief, a world-weary former girl friend, and Mad-den’s father, old now but still a Herculean figure, a practitioner of the sternest backroom ethics. 

That was just what the day called for.  I settled in for a few hours of reading and before I knew it the day, night and most of the next day were lost to this amazing novel.  The book held me hostage and I loved every moment of it.  Yes, Mailer could be brutish in his prose and yet you couldn’t deny the confidence with which he wrote.  His violence was poetic and his understanding of the sleepy off-season tourist town was uncanny.  All the characters glowed with their dim brilliance and in the end, you knew you’d been on a ride.

Still, Mailer wasn’t just a mystery writer or indeed, even a full-time fiction writer.  Mailer wrote whatever the hell he felt like writing, garnering two Pulitzer Prizes along the way.  He could no more be placed into a solitary genre than Robert Anton Wilson.  Mailer died (he passed this last weekend of renal failure) attempting to find the elusive “Great American Novel” and though critics and readers alike argued that he never did, I feel differently.  I think Tough Guys Don’t Dance is just as American as apple pie and baseball and Old Glory herself.  Only in America could the characters of this novel exist.  And great?  Hell yeah.  A blistering snapshot of life in the late 70s, complete with addictions, murder, jealousy, wife-swapping and corruption.  Life was ambiguous back in those days as we clung to the glamour afforded us by the 60s and saw the awareness on the horizon in the 80s.  Tough Guys Don’t Dance IS the “Great American Novel” and Norman Mailer was our “Great American Novelist”.

And where is our lifestyle to suit these dinosaurs?  Mailer traveled the world, writing in the cafes of France or smoking a joint in some outdoor bar in Mexico.  If I went to France I’d feel as though I didn’t belong.  If I smoked pot in a Mexican bar, I’d find myself doing twenty years in a Mexican prison.  Today we’re afraid to not be classified as a genre writer.  If I write something other than horror, I get reader attrition.  But there’s more in me than that, hence pseudonyms.  A fan wants to know when they shell out the ridiculous price of books these days that they get just what they’re expecting.  Norman Mailer was married six times, myself only twice (though I think I’ll stop here).  Mailer stabbed one of his wives with a penknife.  I threw a plastic water bottle at the wall.

Of course these things weren’t all good nor good for you.  I get up every morning and trudge up to our spare bedroom for time on the treadmill or an hour of weight lifting.  I eat six small well-balanced meals (a portion of protein, carb and vegetable) a day.   I wouldn’t travel outside of America’s borders these days and I’m managing a stock portfolio.  And I find myself wondering, in these enlightened times are we missing what made these dinosaurs great?

So, I raise my coffee through a haze of cigarette smoke and I give a nod to a great American novelist.  May I be half as respected and remembered as you, great sir.  Thank you for that rainy day and for teaching me that writing is more than words on a page.  It is heart and guts.  Godspeed.

Want to catch a fish on a slow day?  Put more than one pole in the water.  While that sounds simple enough, it was something that took me more than two years to figure out.  While working on only one project at a time, I found my attention waning and my days long and isolated.  My return on investment was slow in coming.  So now, working closely with publisher and editor, I’ve decided to up the ante.  I’m working multiple projects at once, putting more poles in the water.  And while this seems like my production would slow, this week alone it’s more than tripled.  Back in corporate life I was always a multi-tasker, but I never once thought of using that mentality in my creative life and I’ve suffered greatly for it, as have the fans who have been waiting much too long for new work from me.  By an agreed upon schedule, by the end of next year we’ll see as many as three new book titles appear, to say nothing of short stories, which are starting to look more like monthly releases.

For the first time, my energy as a writer is beginning to match the energy that I used to create the successful career in my previous life.  Sometimes the answers to what plagues us is so simple that it can’t be seen and we pine for the time we lost coming to the light.  Still, I’m a firm believer that things happen when they’re supposed to, otherwise my life is inexplicable.  I’ll ride this new wave as full of heart and with the strength of will that I rode all the previous waves.  And in the end, what will be, will be.  Maybe we’ll catch a shitload of fish!

So there I am … my wife and I involved in a serious, balls-out sexual escapade and I’m sliding into home plate when all of a sudden someone jumps up behind me with a shovel and smashes in the back of my skull!

Okay, that’s not what really happened.  Oh the first part is true enough, but there was no guy with the shovel.  It only felt that way.  In a hateful, defeated moment I flung myself off my perch and into the mattress face first, hands clamped to the sides of my head as though I’m attempting to keep the very shape of my skull together.  Holly was dutifully worried and wondered if I were dying.  Of course, in the little itty bitty part of my brain that could still think, that’s what I wondered as well.  You know, it’s one thing to say, “what a way to go”, and another entirely when you believe it’s happening.

After about ten minutes of panting and wishing I were dead, the pain at the base of my skull began to subside, but not my libido.  Hi ho, hi ho, it’s back to work I go.  Again, as the golden ring approached I could feel pressure start to burst from the back of my head and quickly stopped in an effort to stall what I suspected might be approaching.

Holly, sweet, sexy wife that she is, decided it wouldn’t be appropriate to leave me in such a condition and took matters into her own hands.  I lay as still as possible thinking I must have pinched a very pissed off nerve and I was doing fine, that is until the moment of no return.  While I exploded south, my brain went into a blistering, blinding, teeth grinding agony.  Pillow over my face, crying in pain I waited for what seemed like an hour before I even dared move.

Thank God for the Internet.

These thunderclap headaches are commonly known as benign coital headaches, and are somewhat common, though terribly frightening.  They tend to show up without reason for a week or more and then disappear just as arbitrarily as they arrived.  Now, I make a living at describing pain, but this escapes me.  It’s not like the eye-crossing frontal lobe stuff.  This is deep and resonant.  And you know what?  They’re so painful you’re actually afraid to have sex!  Ain’t that about a bitch?

They say the best cure is to excuse yourself from sex for a week or so (even masturbation) and see if they subside.  If they don’t, it’s off to the CAT scan.  But seriously, I may be 39 but I’ve still got the libido of a 22 year old and two weeks of not even rubbing one out seems daunting.

If the chapters I write during these two weeks are dripping with carnality, well, now you’ll know why!  Ah nature, you cruel mistress, I’d bend you over if my head didn’t hurt so badly.

I’ve begun a new short story, gleaned from some snowy idea. It’s on the long side for a short, about an author who crashes his car during a storm and becomes snowbound. In his torment he relives a dark time in his past and finds himself haunted and driven in the blinding snow. He faces the truth of what happened some thirty years before and uncovers a mystery that reveals a dark pattern that has strangely been missed by the rest of the world.

This story, if it cooperates, will be published on the site sometime after “The Greeter”. I’ll post more about it as things go.

Those blessed moments when life simply happens.  Aren’t they the best?

We were having dinner Friday night, Holly and I, and listening to my favorites playlist on the iPod.  After dinner, a warm buzz from Blackhaus and Rumplemintz, respectively, we danced lightly to a song, watching the rain fall on the back deck.  The iPod, either sensing or creating from a list of over 3,000 songs an atmosphere kept playing fun or romantic songs.  I told Holly to kick off her shoes and pulled her out onto the deck where we danced in the rain under the diminishing light of the day.   I’ve been alive for nearly forty years and I’ve never once danced in the rain.  When Shania’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much” came on Holly scooped up Perry, our chihuahua and danced around like the happiest woman in the world, much to Perry’s chagrin.

Back in the kitchen, clothes helter-skelter, we danced a little while longer to Babylon A.D.’s “Desperate” (if you don’t know it, look it up … great tune).  After that was what being a husband and wive is all about.

These little moments, these unplanned journeys into each other are what makes the everyday life bearable.  There are some who believed that our marriage, following so closely after respective divorces was certainly doomed to failure.  We know they’re wrong, but on nights like these we’re never more certain.

Put on some good music, have a few glasses of wine and hold onto each other in the waning light of day.  In the end all you really have is each other.  Make moments that count and dream of serendipity.

For those of you who may remember, last year, After Dark Horrorfest introduced us to “8 Films to Die For.” I didn’t get the opportunity to get to the theatrical showings and to be perfectly honest, haven’t had the opportunity to view the DVD releases of last year’s films.

However this year, Holly and I will be attending in person. The currently scheduled films are, “The Deaths of Ian Stone”, “Nightmare Man”, “Frontiers”, “Borderland”, “Mulberry Street”, “Tooth and Nail”, “Lake Dead”, and an as of yet unannounced title. For more information (and a killer trailer) check out www.horrorfestonline.com.

Holly and I will be in attendance (in a strictly non-professional, (this means no book signing and what not) capacity) at the first weekend of the Norfolk, VA showings. If you’re going to be in the area and want to chat or just meet up to say hello, drop us a line or comment on this post with your email address and we’ll try to set something up.

To yet another version of Darkwriter.com!

Watch this blog for a peek inside my somewhat odd and usually interesting mind.

More to follow …