Dime Store Riot

On Saturday, February 16, +David James Keaton   put together a reading and invited me to attend.  I rode down to Louisville with my friend +Rick Schmelz . He’s from the general area, had to stop at his brother’s house anyway, and it had been a while since the two of us had gotten a chance to hang out. We ended up making fantastic time on the way down and arrived at the location early. Though we missed getting the chance to hang out with David and his wife ahead of time, Rick and I were still able to have a couple drinks, grab some food, and talk. The lovely wife stayed at home and hung out with her friend Vanessa. Maria just wasn’t up to riding in the car for that length of time or being out in public that late. And she knew I needed that day a lot. As much as I did want to meet David and participate in the reading, honestly, simply getting out of the house for a reason other than a doctor’s appointment was something I needed desperately. We’ve had so many issues for the last c

Lately the wife and I have been revisiting a lot of movies we haven’t seen in a while that we both remember liking. Some we own and hadn’t taken off the shelf in years, and others just ended up in the Netflix instant queue as soon as they popped up in the onscreen menus. It’s been a hit and miss experience. I expected some of it, but a few films have surprised me. In Ted Demme’s ensemble dramedy Beautiful Girls , Timothy Hutton returns to his small town for his high school reunion. He hangs out with his old buddies and they confront the "crossroads" of their thirties. Back in 1996, I thought it was funny, dramatic, and full of important life lessons. Watching it now—not so much. It’s plotless—random scene, random scene, cue trite and preachy philosophizing, and then repeat. There are too many characters to emotionally invest in any of them. Timothy Hutton’s fixation on the young Natalie Portman now that I’m in my thirties and not just a couple of years older tha

Last Saturday as it started snowing again, we pulled into the strip mall a couple of blocks south of the square and parked by the all-ages music club and youth center. I finished my cigarette, grabbed the camera, then we both got out and walked around the building into the long alley that stretches from Smith up to 3 rd street. With the wind, it was bitter cold since the buildings funneled most of the chill straight down the alley. Though Friday was still unpleasant, it had warmed up enough to melt most of the old snow, but along the alley there were still drifts and lakes of slush. Even during the summer, not a lot of sun falls back there. It gets lost on the jagged rooftops of the old brick buildings opposite. They’re big crumbling breasts, cryptid survivors from the manufacturing era that you only notice from out of the way places like that. The rest never makes it over The Rise, the transitional apartment housing for impoverished mothers and their families who’ve been victim

In The Clear, Black Fields of Night is now available for the Kindle. It’s only 99 cents and includes Garnett Elliot’s “Loose Ends” short as a bonus. Pick it up here  and, in case you missed it, grab Simon Rip’s first adventure here . As a big fan of sci-fi pulp adventure, I’m very excited for Black Fields to finally be loose in the wild. To encourage your excitement, here’s what I’m gonna do: anyone who e-mails me proof that they purchased Black Fields by February 8 th will get their name tossed in a hat; on February 9 th , I’ll draw one of the names, whatever name I draw will receive a random issue from my old pulp mag collection. Plus, the first person to e-mail me the very specific Doctor Who nod that I included in Part I: Time And Terror will get a random issue from my French pulp mag collection. My e-mail is pretty easy. It's my name. And it's a gmail account. You can also FB or Google+ message me, if you prefer.