Lower the Curtain Down on Memphis

 This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

My new film SMART HOUSE has hit streaming platforms; I will suggest catching it right here on Tubi, since you can see all three of my films there for free (including one in a Spanish dub).  And finally, my wife's colleague's teenaged kid likes one of my movies, even if it was made by an old person.  Won over one of my harshest critics.

I am thankful to director Joe Swanberg's microcinema in Chicago; "Late Shift at the Grindhouse" at Film Scene in Iowa City, Iowa; and the Englewood Theater in Englewood, Ohio for providing screenings of my movie before its street date.

I talked my wife into watching ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS, a box set of folk horror, during October, and we had a lot of fun with it.  Start with the Eastern European ones that lean into the folk more than the horror to see some unique and offbeat films.

My reading is finally picking up again and if you like my newsletter you'll probably like THE MILITIA HOUSE by John Milas.  It's about a couple of soldiers at a base in Afghanistan who get bored and decide to visit a spooky abandoned house they can see just outside the wire, a bad idea.  It absolutely scared the fire out of me, and I don't get scared very easily.  I'm about halfway through SILVER NITRATE by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and I can tell it'll be recommended by me as well.  It's all about the occult and old Mexican horror movies so you know I'm going to be down for that.

The last time I sent a newsletter I had knuckled down and bought a Mac Mini tricked out with Final Cut to re-learn editing, but it's all still in the box.  The truth is I've been struggling with depression and have had to enter an outpatient program that involves medication, therapy, and coursework.  Having untreated depression has derailed a lot of my day job and b-movie night life, as well as everything else, so if you are reading this and in the same boat as me, I encourage you to seek help before you hit the guard rail and spin out like I did.

Hoping to re-enter the b-movie world again with new projects before long, but until then, thanks for reading.

Like Dylan in the Movies

 

Slowly chugging through post on SMART HOUSE for a end-of-March deadline.  Got a picture lock in and sent to the composer, with the color timing, sound mix, and some effects to put in.  Really happy with this one.

Some sweet merch from SMART HOUSE, print run of two, came out from Ashlee Britt, who did script supervision on the film and also designed the Mothman tee shirt you see in the movie.  It memorializes the image she drew on the slate, and one of her favorite lines.  I got one and co-writer Richard Pierce got the other.

I just use a whiteboard for a slate.  I don't need to use a fancy clapboard with my name written on it, and the DP, and whoever else.  We know who worked on it.  It seems like people like to have clapboards with their names written on it so maybe this is sacrilege.

Production on my new grandbaby wrapped up a few weeks ago as well.  Her name is Amelia Rose and she is keeping everyone pretty busy.  She cries whenever her Boompa looks at her so she may end up being pretty smart.  Her great-grandma worked in the costume department on this project, as seen here.

Just got back from England, where I went on a field study with my wife and a group of students to learn more about Jane Austen.  I read PERSUASION to prepare, which is about a dried-up spinster of 27 who tries to find love again.  It actually would make a pretty good contemporary Lifetime movie.  It would be fun to do a modern adaptation.  I'm going to read NORTHANGER ABBEY next, which apparently is more of a Gothic and might also have trappings to do a b-movie version, you never know.  I'd like to go more highbrow, at some point.

Best of all my week-long search to find my favorite comic 2000 A.D. ended at the airport, with a good story from Judge Dredd in it.

I've got another recommendation for those who follow this e-newsletter, and it's THE SORCERER OF PYONGYANG by Marcel Theroux.  It's about a kid in North Korea who finds a D&D Dungeon Master's Guide a delegation from the West accidentally leaves behind, and everything that happens to him as a result of it.  Someday I'd like to write a D&D adventure based on what's going on in the novel.

As far as my own writing, I'd like to pitch a new movie to shoot in the spring after we wrap SMART HOUSE for well and for good.  I've got two things cooking and maybe will pitch both and see what happens.

Thanks for sticking around; a lot coming down the pike soon.

Welcome to 2023

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

 I hope all of my readers enjoyed their holidays.  My holiday filmmaking season ended strong, landing legendary b-movie actress Brinke Stevens to voice the sinister A.I. "Cassandra" in my new movie SMART HOUSE.  Probably the first thing I ever saw her in was this, and she has worked steadily in the decades since.  I was extremely flattered that first she read the script, and second that she liked it and wanted to participate.  It should add a lot of value to the film.

And you can catch an exclusive secret teaser trailer featuring Brinke and lead Iabou Windimere right here.

I didn't quite make my goal of reading 50 books in 2022, what with my beloved dog dying, a health scare, my son's wedding, shooting this movie, and a new granddaughter (I think in that order), but a handful I did read that I can recommend to anybody include THE EMPLOYEES by Olga Ravn, SLEEPWALK by Dan Chaon, THE HEAP by Sean Adams, and PATRICIA WANTS TO CUDDLE by Samantha Allen.

I'm almost done reading something right now I think will be on my 2023 list for sure, and it's AN HONEST LIVING by Dwyer Murphy.  So that gives you a top five to choose from.

My resolutions for 2023 are pretty much my usual ones; take care of my health, help shepherd my kids and grandkids through the world, be creative.  Hoping you all can meet your goals for 2023 as well.  Take care.

Top Ten Reads of 2021

In another bad year, I had a good reading year, with a lot of great choices below.  Here are my Top Ten books, in a year where I passed by goal of 50 and hit 64.   Enjoy!

RAZORBLADE TEARS by SA Cosby

STILL LIVES by Maria Hummel

ZERO ZONE by Scott O'Connor

UNDER THE HARROW by Flynn Berry

THE RESISTERS by Gish Jen

HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead

THE KILLING HILLS by Chris Offutt

THE GUIDE by Peter Heller

THE BODY SCOUT by Lincoln Michel

THE MISSING AMERICAN by Kwei Quartey

Best Reads of 2020

 Passed my goal of reading 50 books in 2020 and topped out at 66 in a strange year.  Here are my favorites, if you are looking for a new read.

The Black Jersey by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

These Women by Ivy Pochoda

Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby

The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter

The Fragility of Bodies by Sergio Olguin

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel

Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden

Red Dust by Yoss

The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel

Enjoy!

Feed Your Head, 2019 Edition

I read 63 books this year; I struggled a bit to pick a top ten, but my top five all blew my mind in different ways, and could be recommended to anyone wanting a fresh read.  Enjoy!

Destroy All Monsters by Jeff Jackson

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Easy Motion Tourist by Leye Adenle

The Ready-Made Thief by Augustus Rose

The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag

 Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Big Sister by Gunnar Staalesen

My Sister is a Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris

Orson Welles's Last Movie by Josh Karp

Top Reads of 2018, and Reads of the Decade

I read 58 books in my annual quest of reading 50 books a year.  Another good year, on the world landscape, to hunker down and read.  Might have helped if I hadn't read so many dystopian novels.

This year my Top Ten favorite reads were:

Severance by Ling Ma

Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin

The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau

Tangerine by Christine Mangan

November Road by Lou Berney

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg

The Italian Party by Christina Lynch


I first undertook this internet challenge with some friends way back in 2008, and since then I have read 598 books, or an average of 54 a year.  I didn't make it in 2013 and 2014, being a span of time when both my kids got married and a grandson was born, and I read an astounding 81 books last year, because obviously it was 2017.

I grabbed the top from every year, and some others I didn't rank as highly but have stayed with me over time; that initial list was 20, and here are the Top Ten.

I'm too close to this year's batch, but I think Severance might be there somewhere in the long haul.

The first two I have recommended to everyone, and in fact when I shot my debut feature film The Girl in the Crawlspace earlier this year, they were two of the books I gave to my lead actors as a thak you for their roles.  The next two were also a heavy influence on my movie, as a character reads them during the action.

I had to include The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as it started my now ten-year love of Scandinavian crime fiction (as well, I suspect, as quite a few other people).

The others I would just say were mindblowers in some way that sent my thinking in different directions. 

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

 Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin 

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

 The City and The City by China Mieville

 Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


Here are the next five that I had to think hard about before excluding:

Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

Embassytown by China Mieville

Maybe this list would be slightly different if I did it again tomorrow, but maybe not.

A couple of times I have picked goals for the year; once I read a year of all women writers and once I did a year of people of color or people in translation.  If I have a goal for this coming year, I think it will be read harder and smarter; we shall see.  I hope you see something here you'd like to read!

A Shooting Star Has Crossed My Land

This blog post first appeared in I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, my e-newsletter you can subscribe to from the sidebar.

I have enjoyed seeing people explore what books are shown in TV shows and movies, from MAD MEN to ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK to LUKE CAGE.  I tried in my own small way to signal a few ideas in my directorial debut THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE.

During the role-playing game scenes I tried to fill in with a lot of Easter Eggs for nerd culture fans.  I set up the gamer Dewclaw (Joe Skeen) as being a bit of a collector of outsider art and culture, so I seeded some of my favorite independent comics and such around, most of which unfortunately you can't see in the movie (nor several of his tee shirts, which were designed by some friends).  But you can definitely see my old friend Ray Otus' RPG zine PLUNDERGROUNDS on the table.  Ray also did all of the D&D style art you see in these scenes, which gives those parts some added production value.

You also see Jill (Erin R. Ryan) reading or carrying a TEX comic around in several scenes.  Tex Willer is one of the greatest, most long-running heroes of Italian fumetti, and every time I go to Rome I make a pilgrimage to the Piazza della Repubblica and the great outdoor stalls there full of fumetti, giallo novels, old records, and other remnants of Italian pop culture to pick up a few issues (I own issue 500, and TEX is still going strong).

A question I have been asked a lot is if the dream cowboy Jill sees (played by Joe Kidd) is supposed to be the spaghetti western hero Django--in fact, Jill's D&D character is named Django the Bastard, after one of my favorite spaghettis--but I honestly never thought about that.  I really meant for him to be Tex Willer.  But Tex has such an iconic look that I chickened out and named him Lucky after Russell Hayden, part of a story I have recounted a few times but can be read here. And even more honestly, I knew Joe still had his Wild Bill costume from CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE, in which, ironically, he also plays a ghost.

I also had the young gamer Skinflayer (Chelsi Kern) with a paperback book nearby in several scenes.  My thought was when the older gamers were going on and on about rules and such she would probably get bored and start reading.  The two books you see her reading are STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND by Samuel R. Delany and THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin.  Delany's work really changed my whole outlook on science fiction and sent me out on different paths in reading and writing, and Le Guin's novel is just definitive.  Interesting, both have to do with sexuality and gender identity, which plays a tangential (but as it has borne out) memorable part in the movie.

The question I have been asked about more than if Joe was Django is about one of the gaming group scenes.  Many people ask questions about the scene where the gaming group starts to rattle off their lists of attractive people they would rather be gaming with instead of their real-life friends, or tell me it was their favorite scene.  This was interesting to me because it was one of the first scenes I thought of when I decided on including the gaming group in the story.

Basically what happens is the other guys start naming off everyone they fantasize about, from Suzanne Pleshette in THE BIRDS to Linda Stirling in ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP to Lynda Carter in WONDER WOMAN.  Skinflayer counters with Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, and her other female crushes.  Then Tangerine (Clifford Lowe) recalls his list, featuring Italian muscle men from Gordon Scott to Reg Park.  There is a brief pause, and then everyone chimes in with their favorite Hercules actors as well, to Tangerine's great relief.

There's a bit more to the scene, but basically I wanted to convey that everyone already pretty much knew about Tangerine and were fine with it, and he was the last to know that everybody already knew.  The younger Skinflayer is pretty comfortable in her own skin (so to speak), kind of showing some of the generational differences between Skinflayer and the older Tangerine.

But even more so I wanted to show something I have always felt about fandom, be it gaming or comic books or movies, which is that it should be (and most often is) about inclusion.

That's what bothers me so much about controversies like Gamergate or Comicsgate; if you are in fan culture--gaming, comics, movies, what have you--you have probably been labeled an outsider at some point.  If there is any group that should know not to put others on the outside, it's fandom.  We should always reach out to others, not put a wall between us.

Okay, as I said before, I know the movie is about a guy with a canvas sack over his head chasing around poor Erin Ryan, but I wonder if this scene resonates with people because it speaks to those who have been involved in fandom; the easy camaraderie, the support of others' ideas and views, the long friendships that can form, and so on.  People enjoying this scene has been a welcome surprise.  It reminds me, and I hope it reminds everybody, about the best part of fandom.

One more thing I would say about books in my movie actually takes place outside the frame of the film.  On the last full day of shooting, I gave my four leads--Erin Ryan, John Hambrick, Joni Durian, and Tom Cherry--each a book as a thank you for being a part of the project.  All four books are important to me and in some way influenced the movie.  Those books were Marisha Pessl's NIGHT FILM, Emily St. John Mandel's STATION ELEVEN, Ursula Le Guin's THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, and Jim Thompson's THE KILLER INSIDE ME.  If you want a good read, you can't go wrong with any of these.

More next time.

Favorite Reads of 2017

I read an astounding number of books this year, more than I ever have since keeping this blog, close to ten years ago.  But in a lot of ways it was a year like no other, on the national scene, local scene, and in my own extended family, and like a lot of people I burrowed down and read a lot.

Since I read a bit more, I turned this Top Ten list to 11.  Here are my favorite reads of 2017.  Enjoy!

Glaxo by Hernan Ronsino

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera

Silver Screen Fiend by Patton Oswalt

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo by Ian Stansel

The Girls by Emma Cline

Tender Wings of Desire by Catherine Kovach

I'll Be Your Savior, Steadfast and True

This blog post first appeared (in a differently edited form) in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar of this blog.

Summer has come to the Back Five.  Mowing and trimming, putting out a garden; a big chunk of tree fell in the side yard, after a storm, and a laconic elderly man with an axe came by to chop it up for firewood; the chickens are growing, so I need to read a few chapters ahead in my chicken raising book to see when they might start laying eggs.

Speaking of chickens, some friends wondered why I was so eager to read TENDER WINGS OF DESIRE, the free romance novella KFC gave away on Kindle for Mother's Day.

Something about it resonated with me.  Surely many people downloaded it for the express purpose of making fun of it, which is why some people rent movies I wrote; in this case, many have reported back that they were surprised that it is pretty good, and straight-faced.  I have been slowly poking away at it in little spurts on the Kindle app on my phone, but I would report the same thing thus far.

But like in writing b-movies, you have to believe entirely in the world you created.  In horror fandom, they can always smell a rat when you are phoning it in, and I am guessing it is the same with romance fandom, and possibly in any fan base.  So the anonymous author had to believe in what they were doing, and do the best they could for the fans.  It's my job too, and when I see somebody else doing it, I have to give a little salute.

Plus there is the thought that a fast food franchise believed that somebody might want to read a book.  Not goof around on an app, or play Angry Fried Chickens, but sit down a read a novel.  And they were right.  That is really something to meditate on.

Loyal readers of this e-newsletter know that to escape the unbelievable fiction of world events I have been reading a lot of printed fiction.  Somehow I read eight books in May and any number I could recommend for my secret book club pick for May.  GLAXO by Hernan Ronsino was such a great hard-boiled noir I keep casting around in my mind for people to recommend it to.  THE NIGHT OCEAN by Paul La Farge was recommended to me, and is this rabbit-hole metafiction that starts with the real-life friendship of H.P. Lovecraft and a gay teenager living in Florida and grows to encompass many other real figures and all of sci-fi fandom.  But my heart is with Patton Oswalt's SILVER SCREEN FIEND.  On Earth-Two, Patton Oswalt and I grew up together and played D&D and went to movies at the old downtown Rivoli.  But for any reader it explains how anybody could love movies so much.  I listened to the audiobook version, read by Oswalt, and I would suggest you do the same.

Enjoy the long summer days and we will talk soon.

That Night We Split A Rattlesnake

The following blog post came from my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar to get sneak previews of what I'm working on.

A week or so ago I was in Chicago for Trash Movie Night, where I screened JURASSIC PREY for some friendly fans. I truly enjoy visiting this group of people, even when I feel a little trickle of fear every time they cheer loudly when somebody gets murdered.  The Q&As are always good, and I even had a guy say, "I gave this movie a bad review on Amazon, but when I watched it here, I liked it better."  Nothing wrong with that.

JURASSIC PREY the movie keeps getting dynamited out of the ground after a long time just like the lead dinosaur in the story.  There is now a U.K. release, and naturally the box art looks nothing like the stop motion rubber dinosaur inside.

The British website Nerdly, which rated PETER ROTTENTAIL one of the Top Ten Worst Horror Movies of All Time, didn't hate it.  And the Schlock Pit liked it even better than hate.

On the new movie front, the secret project I titled TWICE SHY for the purposes of this e-newsletter is percolating right along for a July production shoot.  I am going to try and visit the set and may even be put to work as a PA.  I have tried in the past to PA for some of my movies and tell the director not to mention who I am so I can hear the actors say truthfully whether the script sucks or not.  I've never been able to pull it off long enough to find out for real and for true.  Having a television production background is handy for these things and also helps me realize what might take a million dollars to do in a movie that, politely, doesn't have that kind of budget.

For April my secret e-newsletter Book Club is Daniel Pyne's CATALINA EDDY.  This is three novellas, loosely threaded together, that represent different time periods and genres of crime writing.  The first, The Big Empty, is set in the 50s and is about a P-I trying to figure out who killed his estranged wife; the second, Losertown, is set in the 80s and is about a prosecutor trying to catch a big-time drug dealer; and the third, Portugese Bend, is a modern thriller about a paralyzed detective and a crime scene photographer teaming up to uncover the true identity of a murderer.  The political side is sometimes painted in broad strokes, but the California noir is pretty cool.

Good luck with your own ongoing projects, and see you soon.

The City of Big Shoulders (from carrying books)

I went to the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention in Chicago this weekend and only spent 20 dollars on all of these beauties, including some Ace Doubles, a Harry Whittington MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., a Robert Sheckley spy novel and some Walter Wager I SPY novels written as "John Tiger."  Good times.

Walk the Dinosaur

This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, in the e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar.

I have been off the grid a bit lately.  For one, I have been building a DIY chicken coop, carefully designed by my dad, for the last six weekends, pounding nails until my hands throbbed.  Secondly, I just wrapped on a new freelance project.

I had been turning down work for a while--what with moving, and probably the busiest year I've ever had at the day job in a long time, I'd decided I needed to go away for a bit.  Sometimes I feel like I have to do like Lestat did in INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE--burrow down into the ground and pop out a long time later as somebody else.  But I didn't feel like being gone quite so long.

I have patterned a lot of my e-newsletter on the one I admire from writer Warren Ellis, who comes up with code names for all the projects he is working on under nondisclosure, only revealing them when they become real.  So in that spirit I am calling this one TWICE SHY even though I can't tell you the real name anyway because I'm not sure one has stuck.  I'm getting to the point of only wanting to do projects that really catch fire for me, and this one did; an opportunity to write a second movie on a topic I like, and a chance to set it in a different time period--in this case, that ancient forgotten era that represents my early teen years.

If all goes well, this one should lens in June, and I was asked if I was interested in visiting the set, which a writer should never take lightly as by and large nobody wants to see you anymore after the screenplay is turned in.  So it's flattering, and I think I will try to do so.

I am headed back to Chicago on Monday, April 24 for another Horror Society Trash Movie Night where the lunatics of the Horror Society will be screening my rubber dinosaur epic mockbuster JURASSIC PREY (which I wrote under the title MEATEATERS before it was mockbusted).  For better or for worse, this is the screenplay that helped bring me out of a years-long self-imposed exile because I couldn't turn down writing a stop-motion dinosaur movie for my old friend Mark Polonia (that and HAUNTED HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW for director Henrique Couto, because I couldn't turn down writing a movie where the only superfluous word in the title was "on."  Speaking of flattered, I was very flattered to be asked back after just screening SEX MACHINE there in December.  It was flat cold zero with about a half foot of snow or more last time, so I think we can do better on weather this time--though it's still April in Chicago, so it's a tossup.

I'm a little behind on my secret e-newsletter Book Club, so let me get both February and March out of the way.  I can't get John Darnielle's creepy UNIVERSAL HARVESTER out of my mind, a skin-crawling sketch of midwestern life centered around weird footage spliced into VHS rentals at a lonely store in rural Iowa.  Next I have to recommend the absolutely bats PIRATE UTOPIA by Bruce Sterling, a post-World War I-era thriller about a little upstart sliver of a country between Yugoslavia and Italy chock full of anarchists and rebels with names like "The Art Witch" and "The Ace of Hearts"--all the more crazy because it is (somewhat) grounded in real events.

Talk to you again soon, thanks for sticking with me.

Captured and Ordered in the Army of Mars

Proud to be asked to return to my old haunt, WCTV, for Red Wolves Read, a live reading event on public access television.  I chose selections from THE SIRENS OF TITAN by great Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut, which is the first book of his I read as a teenager.  SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE is one of the great novels of the 20th Century, and BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS is a great melancholy read for an adult, but this one will have a special place in my heart and is a good place to start for new Vonnegut fans.

On the Book Beat

I have been reading a lot this winter, so my latest Book Beat column (for the Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence magazine, from the Magna Cum Murder Mystery Conference) has plenty to chose from.

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Somebody sent London P.I. Cormoran Strike a severed leg, and he has several suspects to choose from in the latest thriller from J.K. Rowling (writing under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym) Career of Evil.

Rowling was outed as Galbraith some time ago, but it's a good thing that she is still using the name, so an unsuspecting young muggle doesn't inadvertently wander into this story.  It is chock full of adult elements, including gruesome murders and dismemberment, spousal and child abuse, and plenty of fighting and gunplay.

But it is Rowling's characters and situations that go beyond the genre trappings; Strike's troubled childhood with a rock star father, his loyal assistant Robin on the verge of making a bad-luck marriage, and various family members and friends are well drawn and interesting.

This is the third in the series, and all are recommended to mystery fans.

The Girls by Emma Cline

At the end of the 60s, at the end of her parents' marriage, a teenage girl gradually disconnects from suburbia and falls in with a growingly dangerous cult in Emma Cline's debut The Girls.

The Girls has elements of literary fiction and elements of thriller, with the obvious parallel being to the Manson murders.  But at its center Cline's novel is really about a young girl's awakening sexuality, and her attraction to a magnetic young woman in the cult.

How this relationship slowly, and then quickly, destroys lives around them is the spine of the story.

This is a solid read for those with any type of fiction interests and is recommended. 

The House Husband by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski

A cop just a day back from maternity leave stalks a serial killer who targets families in The House Husband, from James Patterson's Bookshots line.

Bookshots are thrillers and romances in the beach read style, but at about one-fifth the size.  All are overseen by Patterson with a co-author, in this instance Duane Swierczynski, whose books and comics I have been interested in on their own merits.

This story, told in alternating chapters by the cop and the killer (who seems to lead the mild life of the house husband of the title) hits all the expected beats, but a twisty ending and a Philadelphia setting add value.

I enjoyed reading this quickly, as intended.

The Widow by Fiona Barton

A woman gradually begins to suspect that her husband is responsible for a child's disappearance in The Widow by Fiona Barton.

Barton's novel is at both times a portrait of a marriage and a psychological thriller, and the story ratchets up the tension by peeling back the onion through one revelation after the next.  Although I saw the ending coming, it was sufficiently suspenseful throughout.

The Widow benefits from having various chapters told from alternating points of view, mostly from an ambitious reporter and a dogged police detective, but also including the mother and the husband.

The Widow tries to land in the same range as The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl, with pretty good results.  For fans of thrillers.

Desperado: A Mile High Noir by Manuel Ramos

A down-on-his-luck guy reluctantly helps an old high school friend who is getting blackmailed--but when the old friend turns up dead, things quickly go from bad to worse in Desperado:  A Mile High Noir by Manuel Ramos.

Ramos hits all of the right genre beats, including a can't-win-for-losing protagonist, but adds interest by setting the story in the center of Latino culture in a gentrifying Denver.

I would recommend this novel to any noir fans, especially readers who want to hear from a different voice in the genre.

The Bastards of Pizzofalcone by Maurizio de Giovanni

A group of unwanted cops are sent to staff a precinct on the verge of closing; but when an affluent woman is murdered, they have a chance to redeem themselves both personally and professionally in The Bastards of Pizzofalcone.

This is the first novel in a new Italian crime series from Maurizio de Giovanni, bringing the lead cop over from his solid thriller The Crocodile.  Lojacono, called "The Chinaman," teams up with a handful of tarnished heroes on this and several other cases that thread throughout, as they try to hold various aspects of their personal lives together.

de Giovanni acknowledges Ed McBain and his "87th Precinct" books in the writing of this novel, and his nods to the source material show throughout.  Fans of McBain will enjoy this outing, a story that would fit right into that series but seen through a different cultural lens.

I thought the mystery was somewhat slight, but the characters and situations highly interesting, making it a fast read.

Silenced by Kristina Ohlsson

An immigrant killed in a hit and run, a vicar and his wife in a murder-suicide, and a young woman being terrorized in Bangkok are all tied together, and it's up to a special squad of Stockholm detectives to figure out how in Kristina Ohlsson's Silenced.

Ohlsson weaves a tangled plot, even more knotty with the complex backstories of the team of detectives trying to solve the various cases.  One is pregnant by a married lover, another senses trouble at home, a third is going through a volcanic divorce which is impacting his work.

Characters you can invest in, and sharp storytelling, make Silenced a satisfying read, especially for fans of Scandinavian crime stories.

The Believer by Joakim Zander

A woman in New York is a trendspotter for hip companies; back in Sweden, her younger brother Fadi becomes radicalized and heads to Syria; and in London, another woman has a laptop stolen after a night of drinking.

How these three storylines connect, and are connected to shadowy government agencies, is at the center of Swedish thriller The Believer by Joakim Zander.

This is a big, globe-trotting book ready-made for a movie adaptation starring Emily Blunt.  In the writing world, I would most closely equate Zander with late-era John LeCarre.

Slices of immigrant life in Sweden adds value to one of those big conspiracy storylines it never pays to think too hard about.

The Oslo Conspiracy by Asle Skredderberget

A young woman is murdered in Rome, and her younger brother killed in a schoolyard in Oslo; it is up to an Oslo cop with a Norwegian father and an Italian mother to stitch the two cases together in The Oslo Conspiracy from Asle Skredderberget.

I enjoy a lot of Scandinavian mysteries, but I'm not sure I've ever read one with a protagonist quite like this; typically the main characters are quite morose with myriad emotional problems, but Milo Cavalli--from a moneyed family, with plenty of girlfriends  and a penchant for globe-trotting and other fine things--is positively breezy by comparison.

The plotting is a breezier as well, reading a bit more like a beach thriller with action scenes with backdrops in various cities and a storyline featuring international business,, crime gangs, and the mysterious sinking of an Italian ship years ago.

Much lighter than the average Scandinavian thriller, for better or worse depending on one's tastes; either way quite readable.

Riding Into the Sunset, I Wish I Could Be

I have been involved in a very active Facebook group featuring pulp fiction and pulp paperbacks of all kinds, and it is the most co-dependent group of addicts I have ever been around--most of them middle-aged guys like myself who like going down deep rabbit holes and finding offbeat stuff.  A box of westerns was going through the mail service, and you could take out what you wanted and put in stuff for the next guy.  The top row is what I took out, the bottom row what I put in.  I blame writing CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE for my renewed interests in classic western books and movies.

Where the Hot Springs Blow

This entry first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar.

I ended up reading 18 books in January, well on my way to reading 50 books this year, my usual goal.  I don't know if it was because of hunkering down for the winter, getting ready to go on some sort of creative binge, afraid to watch the news, or all of the above.

But my book club entry for January is Warren Ellis' NORMAL, for a lot of reasons.  It was Ellis who gave me the idea to do an email newsletter.  He is a long-time comic book writer who has written several challenging genre novels.  This one was published in chapters via Kindle and then came out in paper.

He always gives you a lot to think about.  This one is about a trend forecaster who starts to lose his mind predicting a bleak future, and ends up in an asylum.  After another patient is murdered in a locked-room mystery, he tries to put the pieces back together.  Pretty nutty overall.

I have this perverse desire to read gloomy Scandinavian mysteries in the winter; I guess to realize that my life, and my Indiana winter, isn't that bad (If you have already read all THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO books go looking for Jo Nesbo, Arnaludur Indrioason, Helene Tursten, Asa Larsson, for a start).

I thought I would jump on some Scandinavian movies and have by and large found them surprisingly cheery and sometimes outright funny.  Some pretty good ones I have seen lately are A MAN CALLED OVE, THE 100 YEAR OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED, IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE, FORCE MAJEURE.  IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE has Stellan Skarsgard as a snowplow driver, if you really want to think we have it easier here.

We are closer to the end of winter than the beginning, a good thing.

Trying To Relax, Up In The Capsule

This entry first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP which you can subscribe to in the sidebar.

I have been on a crazy reading binge lately, having knocked out a dozen books this month, reading one about every other day or so.  Either it's winter, and I'm in burrowing mode, or I am getting ready to have a big chunk of creativity, or maybe both.

I had a crazy fall, and turned down some screenwriting work, but it may be time to get back in the saddle.  I have had an idea for a dystopian sci-fi screenplay since last summer, but let's be honest, is this really the right time to write a dystopian story?  And whether it is or isn't, I suspect a lot of people are cranking on them right now anyway.

I have been reading a lot of pulp paperbacks again; spaghetti-flavored westerns and hard-boiled mid-century noir and other fast reads.  There is something about these authors from this time period, somewhere in that span of time from the 1950s to the 1970s, writing for the spinner racks, many of them borderline alcoholics or chasing other demons, churning out a book a month sometimes under a handful of names, often not their own.  I have an affinity for them the way I do following the peculiar rhythms of VHS horror movies, and threadbare spaghetti westerns on broken-down sets, and DIY backyard epics.  To be reminded that putting your butt in the seat and working is just as valuable or perhaps more so than being an artistic genius.

Speaking of spaghettis, my homage to those movies, CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE, is free on Amazon Prime right now, if you still have missed it.  I named most of the villains after bad guys played by Klaus Kinski--memorably the guy that gets a match lit off of his face in A FEW DOLLARS MORE, but I love him as "Hot Dead" in I AM SARTANA YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH--if you wondered how much I really love Italian oaters.

Favorite Reads of 2016

 After reading only women authors for a year, I thought I would embark on reading only authors of color, and authors in translation, for a year.  I thought these back-to-back experiments would make me a better reader and writer, and I think it was true.  I definitely sought out new voices that I might not have tried otherwise.  And below are my favorites of all that I found.

1.  The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

2.  The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

3.  The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson

4.   The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaVelle

5.  Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

6.  The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

7.  Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

8.  The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

9.  Moonstone by Sjón

10.  The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez

Happy reading!

With My Head Made of Rock

This blog entry first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP which you can learn more about by subscribing in my sidebar.


As I hoped, SEX MACHINE was confirmed as the top of the double bill during Horror Society's Trash Movie Night I will be hosting in Chicago on December 14. Myself and the organizer, Matt Storc, both hit on the Italian horror movie LADY FRANKENSTEIN as the bottom half of the bill.  This has more in common with a Hammer horror film than a traditional Italian horror film but I think people will find it cool--and maybe I will not only get to talk about the movie I co-wrote with Christopher Sharpe some years ago now, but my love for Italian cinema as well.

Even more agreeably, Matt liked my idea of supporting Chicago's Open Books Project as part of the night. I am trying to do what I can to tend my part of the garden.

I will be giving away an autographed copy of SEX MACHINE that night.  If you are there, and think the movie sux, at least you have a white elephant for the gift exchange at work.  Just don't give it to the HR person.

I'll see what I can do to provide another surprise or two.

For the first time, on the night before Thanksgiving, I went with my daughter and her husband to Feed My Sheep, which prepared meals for those in need in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana.  An entire Canadian family was alongside me washing dishes, having stopped on their way to Arkansas for a family Thanksgiving the next day.  They just wanted to help, and when I asked for more information, they said, "It's complicated."  Yeah, it is.

My Thanksgiving passed peacefully, and I hope yours did too.

November only has one day left, so my book club pick is WHITE TIGER by Aravind Adiga.  It is about a lowly driver in India who composes a series of letters to the premier of China about entrepreneuriship, which actually reveals a long line of treacheries, deceit, and murder.  Can be read as an intellectual thriller or as a treatise on the class system in India, and works pretty well as both.

Hang in there, all.