GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #323: BLOOD, TOM PICCIRILLI AND ANDREW VACHSS

 Today was slightly insane for me. I had so many topics for tonight's GF that I nearly went insane thinking about it. But after reading this I decided I had to be a writer tonight. People tell me that I should teach, but that would be so wretched to me. I'm fine with writers who are cool with that, but it's just not me. I have nothing worth teaching. I'm an asshole like everyone else. So fuck it. I'm a guy who never wants you to think about me. I want you to read my work and not think about the guy who wrote it. So against my better judgment, let's do this.

I tried writing BLOOD a few years back. I talked to a guy in a bar, and he told me that when he got frustrated, he would pull over and chop a tree down to get it out of his system. I get it.

But here is my dedication: "To everyone I've ever hurt, especially you. You'll know who you are after reading the prologue." I'm not fucking around. He will never read that prologue because he doesn't read books, but if he did, he would know why. I literally tried to strangle someone to death. I failed, thankfully, but it has haunted me forever. I didn't think I was capable of that, but I was. I did it. And then something made me turn back, and instead of killing this person, I punched the wall so hard I broke my knuckles.

I am so glad I broke my knuckles to stop me from killing someone. I would much rather have hands that don't fully work than be in prison for life. (My state frowns upon the death penalty.) And the crazy thing is, I love the man I tried to kill. He's in my house right now.

So I failed that first draft. I did my best, but I fucked it up. I learned a few tricks, and I tried them out with my story, "Amber." I wrote it and got rejected a lot . . . until it was accepted at an online zine that paid me ten bucks and two bookmarks. It was later in my book, TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE. I used those same principles to rework BLOOD. I got it right this time. It was published and greatly appreciated by the few who read it.

Here's the thing. I didn't really know what I was doing until I was done. I had no idea that it would be my Tom Piccirilli book. I'd read the Necromancer/Self books, and they are fucking great. You won't read anything like them in your life. Highly recommended. I had no idea how much they were an influence until I looked over the published books. And then I read The Midnight Road. And that turned out to be one of my top five favorite books of all time. It's so amazing, I will worship that one until the end of my days. When I read it maybe a couple of months after BLOOD came out, I knew what I'd done. This is my Pic book.

I'd thought I was doing my Andrew Vachss book.

I came to Vachss through Lansdale. I picked up a copy of Act of Love, and Vachss had done the intro. If he had those things to say about JRL, I knew I'd love his work. When I realized they considered each other brothers, I knew I had to read Vachss. I started with the first, FLOOD. I loved it. I loved the Burke stories, but I loved the non-Burke books even better. I learned that Vachss was a pro bono lawyer for abused kids. That shocked me. I was abused as a kid, so I immediately identified. I followed him into Protect, and I left for the same reasons. And this guy wasn't fucking around. He is blunt as a club. I learned so much from him about how to be a man than I ever learned from any of my father figures. He was the real thing, and it's rare to find the real thing on a quest for good. Most, as I used to be, were on a quest for revenge. Some were just bad fucks. But he helped set me on the right path, and he will never know it. I didn't view it as revenge anymore. I viewed it as being GOOD.

Two Trains Running is still my favorite to this day, But even though Vachss helped me find my way back from the disaster my life would have been if I kept hating everyone around me, I learned more from him as a writer. I learned that the things that are most important are implied. Unsaid. That's why Mickey Scarlet, when he listens to people, he waits. He actively listens,, which most characters don't. And when he's ready, he doesn't speak. HE ACTS. You can never truly trust the words someone says. They might sound great, but they're just words. What counts is ACTION. What do you actually do? That's the true definition of yourself. Or anyone. Fact. There is no argument.

When you get down to it, BLOOD really is my Pic book. I meant it to be my Vachss book, but I was close. Not quite right, but close. And right now, I'm working on something that will be my Lansdale book. If published. Maybe my friends Nick Day and Don Noble will be interested, but I don't count on that. If I turn in a turd, they should reject me.

All of the things I write wear their influences on their shoulders. I won't count the short story collections, but otherwise, you know what I mean. Influences are 100% OK. I hope that I make mine my own enough to show my Edward Lee-ish voice, but my own, too. When horrible shit happens, Brian Keene was right. I like to wink at my readers. Sometimes, though, I'm a vicious bastard. No laughs. No winks. No offense, Brian. You had me figured from day one, and very few people do. Respect.

If you learned something from this, cool. I doubt it, but there you go. Maybe that's what I should do with a possible Patreon. I doubt it. I'm not just happy-assholing my way through this shit. It might seem that way, but I put an insane and possibly stupid level of thought into what I show possible publishers. Take from that whatever you can. Good luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #257: THE REASON WHY

This is the 257th installment of GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS. What have I been doing with this? Sometimes I wonder, myself. How did it keep going so long? What is the purpose? How did this become a pattern in my life?


Well, it hasn't been much of a pattern lately. I'm fucking depressed as all hell. My square job is slowly killing me. I like the people I work with. I love the way we interact. The job is OK, too, with the exception of Wednesday night. The commute, though, is destroying my will to live. When I first got the job I found myself making a choice when I got home: write or work out? Can't have both. I chose write for a long time, but I haven't been getting good stuff lately. It's gotten to the point where I choose neither. The only writing I'm getting done these days is my work on the Zimventures, and that's a fucking joke. Besides, they are already written. I'm just changing them. Improving (I hope) them. I get home from work. I shower the day away. And I lose myself in fast food, booze and TV shows. And then I go to bed. And I go to bed so late that it's not worth writing a GF post because no one will read it.


This started when I was inspired by Warren Ellis and Brian Keene. They wrote something the very instant they got out of bed and posted it for the world to see. I love that writing exercise, except I am a very cranky son of a bitch when I wake up. I am not suitable for words when I'm fresh from slumber. My solution: GF is going to be the very last thing I do before I go to bed every night (hence the title). I think it has worked out pretty well. For the most part.


As I get older I think more about GF and its purpose. Now I consider it more of a diary than anything else. But . . . I've been thinking about my own mortality recently. I don't think I'm long for this world. It's not just my bad habits. Maybe it's paranoid, but I feel like I'm being hunted very slowly. Not by anything physical, of course. Just hunted by my own impending death. Maybe it has to do with the fact that next year I'm going to be 40. I thought I'd already had my midlife crisis back in my twenties. I don't know.


But I think the purpose of GF is more than just a diary. I think it's an accounting of my memories. An accounting of who I am for any archaeologist who gives a shit. I'm reading T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle. I've always been fascinated by Alfred Kinsey. I would have loved to give up my sexual history to him personally. To have been a "friend of the research."


Instead I'm going to give up my history to you all, for whatever it might be worth.


Here's a memory for you. I have been writing every since I was a child. When I was in seventh grade my English teacher--who I had an enormous crush on--had a project for the class. She said that we were going to all write a book together, and it was to be the life story of a human being. Each of us would write a chapter.


I still have a copy of this book. It's really about twenty pages of photocopied text with an occasional picture. Maybe I have the only extant copy. Who knows? But it's in the pile of stuff with POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS and that issue of SHROUD I was in, etc.


Luck of the draw: I got the final chapter. My teacher was very aware of my personal trauma, and she said that if I wanted another chapter, she could reassign it. No, I told her. I really wanted the final chapter. Why?


I helped create the guy. His career. His loves and his hates. I even gave him his first name: Montgomery. Even back then I was a huge Star Trek guy, and I named him after Scotty. I knew all about him before the other students even had a chance to delve into his character.


Why did I want the last chapter? I've never told this to anyone before. I don't know why. I don't see anything wrong with it. It just reaffirms how I've always felt about beloved characters. But here it is. Confession time.


I wanted the last chapter because I wanted the honor of killing him.


To those of you who read my fiction, this will probably make a ton of sense.


This is me. This is who I've always been. If you want my history, it is here in all the GFs I've ever written. If you wanted to piece together who I am, this is what you need to read.


Of course, I'm assuming anyone gives a shit. But maybe, just maybe, some archaeologist will discover the internet long after we've all perished. Maybe that scientist will try to piece together who we were. Maybe they can even turn the internet back on and find my mad ramblings here.


This is all data, no matter how silly or stupid it might be. And I hope I can contribute to the charts of whoever comes next.


Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #211: MY ROAD TRIP TO PENNSYLVANIA

Originally I planned to write a brief blog series about my adventures in PA with Kevin Strange, Mike Lombardo, Lex Quinn, Brian Keene, Dave Thomas, Mary SanGiovanni and Phobe. A lot of it would be about the dead fella bone in my mouth (my bone graft for my impending tooth implant) and Kevin's propensity to rant. (True story: at one point during our road trip he apologized for ranting too much. I told him that I was on a 12-hour road trip with Kevin Strange; I knew what I was getting into.) I was going to exaggerate it all, of course. By the time we got through IN and OH and half of PA we would have been HST and his trusty attorney. Another true story: at one point near the end of our journey I said, "We can't stop here. This is Bat Country."


But I don't have the time to do it justice. In the long run I'd rather let the podcast speak for itself. Besides, Kevin did a great job of talking about our road trip here and here. But I will take the time to make a few comments here. Probably a few more comments than I meant at the end of this very long day, but we'll see if I can remain conscious long enough to do so.


This whole thing started the day after I went through emergency dental surgery. The painkillers knocked me out, so when I didn't have to drive I drank quite a bit. At least while drinking I had my wits about me. I have cadaver bone in my mouth even right now, and that was an endless source of humor and fascination for the weekend.


For as much as I poke fun at Kevin for ranting, he's a great and entertaining friend and navigator. Buy his books here. I'm a speed demon. Imagine how far I cut loose on the open highways of IN, OH and PA. I've never gotten my Civic up to a hundred, but I wanted to. The closest I came was 99. And Kevin was there to warn me of cops he saw that I didn't. There was one time a car wasn't going fast enough to suit me, so I started speeding around it. Kevin then informed me that it was a cop. It looked nothing like a cop car, but HOLY SHIT! There's the State Troopers of IN decal on the side! It was touch and go for a moment, but I lucked out. Zero speeding tickets. That's pretty good, and I owe it all to Kevin.


When we got close to the end of our journey, it was dark and scary. His GPS had us taking back roads, and we suddenly realized, as we DROVE THROUGH A FUCKING COVERED BRIDGE, that Lombardo had secretly invited us to stay with him because he planned to ritualistically murder us. Our surmise was not dispelled when we finally arrived at his place. We rang the bell, and the door very quietly, very slowly opened by itself . . .


Mike Lombardo is an incredibly generous guy. Not only did he give us a place to stay. Not only did he show us a rough cut of I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE DOOMSDAY. But he also gave us this:

How fucking cool is that? I'm super tempted to do a review of WHITE DOOMSDAY for Forced Viewing, but the only thing holding me back is the fact that it was a rough cut. I want to see the finished product before I do that. Suffice to say his work is taking a very interesting new direction. I fucking love it, and I can't wait for you all to see it. You can find out more about his work here.


The next day we got these great burritos. I forgot the name of the place, but I'm fairly certain that the name of the burrito was the Cowboy, or something along those lines. Great hangover food. We also went to a used bookstore (which I also cannot remember the name for), and this was my haul:

The guy who ran the place was an older gentleman, and I think he was impressed with my taste (me being a younger guy). He liked my selection enough that he gave me LANDO and THE QUICK AND THE DEAD for free. If I'm back in the area, I've got to go back to that place. (PS: LANDO has nothing to do with STAR WARS. Spoiler.)


And then came The Horror Show with Brian Keene. It's kind of funny. Kevin and I went out to my car to fetch something when lo! and behold! We ran into Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni as they were approaching the house. It kind of threw us for a loop. First of all, I had no idea I was going to meet Mary. That was a great surprise. And to top it all off, they both arrived bearing gifts. Kevin and I got a bottle of Knob Creek for Brian, and I got a shark for Dave Thomas. I had no idea that we'd be getting gifts in return. Their generosity is amazing. I went home with these (and I thought I'd missed out on the Scares That Care 'zine!):

We did the podcast. It was amazing. You don't need me to tell you that. If you haven't heard it already, you're going to. The link is above. It was great meeting Phobe, too. I had no idea she was going to be there, or I would have brought something for her, too. After the show we had a big signing party. I'd brought stuff for Lombardo and Kevin and, of course, Brian. He's so awesome he signed the shit-ton of books I'd brought:

The collections of Hail Saten are very important to me. I'd put them up there with Laymon's A WRITER'S TALE. I'm proud to have signed copies.


We spent a wonderful evening hanging out, and I got drunk and treated everyone to the Grade A John Bruni Blackout Show (C). I haven't been that far gone in a long time. No, it's not bad. I'm told I'm entertaining when I'm in that state. Weird and loud, but entertaining. So far I haven't shot a man just to watch him die. SO FAR.


The next day we went out to breakfast/lunch-ish at a place called Friendly's where Lombardo kinda-sorta convinced the waiter that it was Lex Quinn's birthday. He requested Jim Dandy crowns for us all. My head is too fucking big, but I wore mine as best as I could. Lex Quinn insisted to the waiter that it was not her birthday, but when he came back, he uncertainly asked, "Uh, is it really your birthday?" And I knew in that moment that Friendly's had a tradition of getting the waitstaff to sing a birthday song for just such occasions. Lombardo instinctively knew, too, and he insisted.


Yes. There was a birthday song. And a birthday balloon. It was glorious.


We went to Philly because I'd expressed my desire to see the Mutter Museum. I wrote about it here. Surprisingly enough the Mutter Museum read that post and loved it. That made me feel really good. Also, they asked me to take part in a survey, and my reward was a bunch of cool Mutter postcards:

Unfortunately my shit tooth was getting the better of me. I couldn't enjoy any food in Philly. We did go to several bookstores and curio shops, though. I found this at one of them:

Wow! A book on Clint that I had no idea existed! It took me a while to figure it out, but I'd never heard of it because it was published exclusively in the UK. But look at that cover! He looks like he needs a bearskin rug to recline on!


That's when we went back to Lombardo's and we had a private screening of WHITE DOOMSDAY. We passed out and got up waaaaaay too early to drive home.


It was a great experience. I hope to do it again someday even though the toll roads nearly throttled us to death. I hope you all enjoyed our appearance on The Horror Show with Brian Keene. I hope you've enjoyed this mini-account of our adventures. I hope you'll buy a bunch of kickass books, and maybe--POSSIBLY--vote for me for US president.


But mostly I hope you enjoyed all of this. I know I did.


PS: on our first night we went to a place called Giant. I gather it's a version of our Jewel/Osco. I found this there:

I tried to explain why I loved this little movie, but I don't think I sold Kevin or Lombardo on it, even though I went straight for the messy diarrhea scene with RDJ trying to help Duvall in the bathroom. Ah well.

KEVIN STRANGE AND JOHN BRUNI ON THE HORROR SHOW WITH BRIAN KEENE!

Check it out here.

COOL SHIT 8-29-13

THE LAST ZOMBIE:  THE END #4:  What.  The.  Fuck?!  We just got three issues of this book in the space of TWO WEEKS.  What’s going on over at AP Entertainment?  Well, I’m not going to complain, certainly not as we near the end of this series.  In the new issue, Ian Scott is closer than ever to turning into a zombie, but he’s got other problems at this moment.  You see, he’s been captured by cannibals, and they don’t believe him when he says he’s infected.  I’m having flashbacks to the time cannibals ate Dale’s leg in THE WALKING DEAD.  Anyway, it would seem the boys have finally reached their destination.  It’s time to turn the final cards.  ONE ISSUE TO GO UNTIL THE END.

(By the way, I also love the deception of this cover.  You know how comic books lie about their contents with their covers all the time?  This one does, too, but the scene depicted actually happens.  It’s not what it seems, though.)

COOL SHIT 8-22-13

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD:  AFTERMATH #10:  Noooooooo!  Writer David Hine lived up to his threat from last issue.  They took my favorite character and injected him with the zombie serum.  Many of you may remember me saying they should have given Vic his own spin-off, but I guess that’s not happening now . . . .  However, he’s not out of the picture yet.  It seems that this new version of the serum has let him retain some of his intelligence.  I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I’ll definitely wait it out and see where Hine is going with this.

THE LAST ZOMBIE:  THE END #3:  The shit has hit the fan.  Dr. Ian Scott’s secret is out.  Everyone knows he’s slowly becoming one of the undead.  Now Planters and company have to figure out what they’re going to do with him.  In the meantime, Frankie turns out to be just like her other incarnations.  For those who don’t know, she’s appeared several times in writer Brian Keene’s novels, usually alternate universe versions of her.  Very few of them turn out to have good luck.  They’ve also made a odd choice with the new artist, Ben Dunn.  In fact, looking through this issue kind of reminds me in moments of my webcomic with Robert Tannahill, THE COCAINE! BROS.  When the guys finally make their escape from Chicago, two of them finally get to deal with Harrow.  As they descend upon him, I get a definite Tucker/Hunter feeling from them.

G.I. JOE:  THE COBRA FILES #5:  Finally, we get a look into Clockspring’s past.  He’s easily one of the creepiest members of the Joe team, and not the cool kind of creepy, like Freddy Krueger.  No, this is creepy like the guy who follows you home at midnight.  Still, it’s great to see him finally fleshed out.  We now see what makes him tick.  When I was at C2E2, writer Mike Costa promised a lot of emotional damage coming in the near future.  I think this might be the calm before the storm.  Writers don’t always deliver on such promises, but Costa usually does.  It makes my ballsack shrivel just thinking about it.  I think things are about to get fucked the fuck up.

CROSSED:  BADLANDS #35:  If there was any doubt that Amanda has finally lost it completely, it should be gone by now.  Lorre really got into her head pretty badly, and now she’s murdering regular people, pretending that the Crossed got to them.  So, you know, she had to mutilate the bodies and cut their dicks off, and all that stuff.  How much farther can writer David Lapham push her?  I guess we’ll find out next issue, when this story arc concludes.  (Oh yeah, and Candy has gotten pretty weird, as I’m sure you can tell from the sample above.  That’s the prelude to the strangest face-fuck in comics history.)

KICK-ASS 3 #2:  This is a low-key story for Kick-Ass himself.  No, the star of this one is Rocco Genovese, the most recent member of this scumbag mobster family to enter into play.  He is infinitely scarier than any of his brethren.  I can’t wait to see more of this guy in action.  This is also quite the issue for the Motherfucker’s mother, who toys with the idea of taking her son out of the world to atone for bringing him into it.  Things get mighty strange by the last page.  (OK, Kick-Ass does one thing that’s really cool in this issue.  Check out his BATMAN YEAR ONE plan to see what I mean.)

COOL SHIT 9-29-11

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #19: So . . . Skinner Sweet and Jim Book, mortal enemies, were childhood friends? And Book’s family adopted Skinner when his parents died, making them brothers? Very interesting. We finally get a look at Sweet before he was turned into a vampire. It turns out that even as a child, he was an evil little bastard. I desperately hope that what happened at the end of #18 wasn’t the end of him. Without him, I don’t know if I want to go on reading this book.

THE LAST ZOMBIE: INFERNO #3: So far, this book has just been good enough. For those who don’t know, the zombie apocalypse is over, and we won. It’s just that the world has been thrown into chaos, and a group of soldiers is making their way across the wasteland that remains. Dr. Ian Scott wants nothing more than to see his wife again, but somehow he’s become infected and is turning into a zombie. He keeps this a secret from the others because he wants to make it to his woman before he dies. The real star, however, and the character who made me want to add this book to Cool Shit this week, is Planters, one of the soldiers, who is haunted by what happened to his family during the zombie apocalypse. We finally get his story, and holy shit, is it a nasty one. If you only know writer Brian Keene from his novels, you should try out this book.

KICK-ASS 2 #4: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, what you see above is Red Mist gunning down several children, and that’s not even the worst thing he does in this issue. All right, he’s calling himself Motherfucker these days, but it’s still everyone’s favorite twat, Red Mist. Even his fellow supervillains think this is fucked up. His response: “Oh, come on. So iCarly loses a few viewers? Give me a fucking break.” He then proceeds to rape Kick-Ass’ love interest. That’s right, he rapes her. Think about the horrifying implications of this. When the Joker crippled Barbara Gordon, did he rape her? No, he merely shot her in the spine. When was the last time you heard of the Green Goblin forcing himself on Gwen Stacy? Right. Writer Mark Millar has upped the ante with this issue. It’s almost like he’s taken Alan Moore’s place. Remember when Moore published the second LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN? And he had Mr. Hyde rape the Invisible Man to death? It was almost as if Moore had seen the movie made of the first and was daring Hollywood to put that scene to film. That’s the same kind of feeling I’m getting from Millar on this one. I’d tell you to go out and buy this book, but considering its enormous popularity, you probably already have.