I may or may not be high in this photo. But I am definitely ROCKIN’!

The first pop music I can remember is Men At Work*. I had a recording of Business As Usual on audio tape, which I played on a tape recorder*. The tape: probably something inherited from my sister, the last sibling to leave the house. The tape deck: appropriated from my father.  This was not a stereo or boom box*, but a tape deck made mostly for recording meetings or interviews, complete with a cheap-ass Radio Shack mic.

(*ask your parents. Or possibly grandparents.)

+++

In 1973, a British band called Pink Floyd released a little-known work called Dark Side of the Moon.  Maybe some of you have heard of it.  (I wasn’t born yet.)

In 1983, a little college band which had nearly named itself “Cans of Piss” debuted their first album, Murmur. Apt, because most people couldn’t make out a word being sung. This was clearly a band destined to have little impact on the world of pop music.

And also in 1983, to, I’m guessing, zero national fanfare at all, a bunch of Orange County punks released a record called Mommy’s Little Monster. I didn’t care. I was in second grade, writing my first short story.

+++

These days, the truth is, I just don’t listen to full albums anymore. Not of new bands, anyway. There’s a few old standbys I can tolerate, but by the time I learned how to make mix tapes my freshman year of high school with a side-by-side tape-deck stereo, the idea of absorbing entire albums at once started waning. It wasn’t a quick death, but the most recently released full album I’ve listened to is Lindi Ortega’s Little Red Boots. (That was 2011.) Prior to that, it was probably 2004, with Social D’s Sex, Love, and Rock n’ Roll.

Sidebar: If you have anything besides your ears pierced, put any color in your hair that is not blonde or brown, wear anything resembling combat boots, have a mohawk…thank a punk. Those guys and gals got their literal asses literally kicked so you could one day watch Cadillac (!) commercials (among others) backed with music by the Ramones.

 

“You couldn’t walk into a mall get your little […..] pierced, and your little Doc Marten boots, and your crazy color for your hair. You walked down the street with blue hair, you was gonna get in a fight with about five angry construction workers, or the local college football team, rednecks, or cops.” ~ Mike Ness, Social Distortion: Live At The Roxy

The truth is, I didn’t discover Pink Floyd until at least 1988. Or R.E.M. until 1990. Or Social Distortion until about the same time. Just putting those three bands in a sentence will likely make at least a few of my few readers recoil in terror. I understand. It makes me feel that way, too.

The other truth is, I don’t much care. These are my people, for better or worse. The three bands that made the biggest impact on me. They – and many, many others of course – formed the soundtrack to a life later spent reliving it and retelling it in the form of novels. Without these bands, I’m not me, and in many ways, I don’t end up doing what I do now.

+++

So what follows will be a meandering look at my own musical history, from the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack (1986, thank you very much) to Tanya Donelly (the only musician to actually feature in the art in my office today), what was happening when I heard the music, where it takes me now, and whatever the hell else happens to pop up. This is a little side non-fiction project I’ve wanted to do for awhile, so it’ll likely be sporadic at best. But I need some journaling time, and kids, this is it.

Men At Work put out some great music. I’ve got a recording, don’t know from where, of Colin Hay doing a mellow acoustic version of Down Under that I rather enjoy. But Men At Work didn’t change my life. Being first doesn’t equate to being best, or favorite, or life-altering. I’m sure as I keep writing this series, I’ll find that many life-changing bands and songs, I don’t much care for anymore. That will be interesting to see. And some bands I won’t even admit to listening to. Unless two shits are truly not given at the time of the writing.

I’ll be using album release years to sort of anchor the stories, although as I mentioned above, actual release years may have nothing at all to do with who or where I was at the time (i.e., Dark Side of the Moon = unborn.) A lot of it will be about high school, as is appropos of my career path at the moment. We’ll see.

Anyway. Enough for now. I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.

There is no dark side of the moon, really.

Matter of fact…

it’s all dark…

*Spoiler Alert* I’m gonna be swearin’! You’ve been warned.

So it’s been a righteously shitty few months over at the homestead, I’m not gonna lie. Nor am I gonna get into details because frankly, the list is epic and I don’t have the energy after the day I’ve had. See, there was this huge windstorm last night, and it knocked over the double-gate to my backyard. I mean, this thing was flat on the ground, snapped off at the posts, no shit.

The only reason I noticed, though, was that my dog Jacob kept going out, coming in, going out, coming in . . .

Which made me think, “Where the hell is Callie?” my other dog, whom I’ve had for something like eight or nine years now. A really happy, slobbery shepherd/retriever/maybe-chow mix. My first big dog. My first dog, really. So I tell Toby, “You know what Han Solo always says: I got a bad feeling about this.”

Sure enough, Callie is gone.

I don’t know for how long. As much as eleven hours is possible. We drive around, we post flyers, we cancel our trip out of town. And of course, there’s still the gate to contend with. Trust me when I tell you this is the shit cherry on my fucked-up-couple-months sundae. So in my head, because I’m too defeated to say it out loud, I pretty much just give up. On life, on people, on hope, you name it, the hell with it.

Here’s why we’re maybe not all doomed.

I call one of my best friends  and tell him about the gate. His response is, essentially, “Lemme grab my tools, I’ll be there in an hour.” I dunno if you’ve ever been in Phoenix in late June, but…it’s toasty out. And there is no shade by this gate. Did I mention my back went out so my help is basically limited to standing around?

But sure enough, he was there in an hour and going to work on that gate. My biggest contribution was driving to Lowe’s for the lumber.

Well, just as he’s wrapping up, the phone rings. It’s a neighbor a few streets away who, naturally, we’ve never met. They have Callie.

They took her to the vet to check for an RFID and get her checked out. They cancelled their plans to go out of town to help this dog they found in a school playground.

Start to finish – from the time I realized Callie was gone and the gate was smashed to getting Callie back and the gate back up – about five hours.

Well, this lovely older couple who found Callie of course refused any reward, nor would they even let me pay for the vet. So I go to our favorite local Italian restaurant to get them a gift card; it’s not enough for having my dog back safe and sound, but it’s something. The little Italian lady behind the counter asks me what the card is for. I tell her about Callie. She nods, nods, nods…then shoves a to-go cup at me and says, “Here. Go get something to drink. It’s hot out there. And I’m happy for you and your dog.”

So…

What could have and by rights should have been one of the worst of the worst days for me actually turned out pretty damned stellar. See, those people are still out there. My friend, this old couple, the restaurant owner. People like them, they are still out there. And by god, I needed to know that now more than ever after this last couple weeks. Yeah, it was a pain-in-the-ass kind of day, but I have my dog back, my gate up, and I discovered that just when I thought I could never and would never trust another living soul, these four folks showed up and took care of business. My business. They didn’t have to. They didn’t owe me.

They did it because that’s what you do.

So this week – this life – I hope you and I can both remember that when the shit looks shittiest, people like this are still out there, and they still care, even for people they’ve never met. Americans – the whole human race – we’re not doomed after all. Not while there’s this kind of community and selflessness happening. So hang in there.

Sidebar, I am so not kidding: Get your pet microchipped.

Have a great and safe holiday week.

Greetings to my three and a half blog readers! I know, I need a new website, something where I can and will post more often and talk about things that maybe matter in some small way. But I digress! What scares you?

Right now, I am either rapid-cycling or my barista gave me caffeine in my coffee drink. I don’t know which. But I’m all kinds of amped. Which is nice after the last couple weeks. But I digress! What scared you?

I was listening to Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and thinking about my background, which really is in writing horror short stories as a kid. I’ve got about six different projects brewing right now, and one of them just so happens to be a horror story that I hope will more middle grade, but knowing me…well, it’s hard to say. I got to thinking about what books or stories actually, really scared me as a kid. Movies are easy; maybe you saw my Halloween blog post about them. But books? It takes a different flair to give someone the creeps (or terrors) than it does on film.

Then I remembered the inimitable (and late) John Bellairs. The Mummy, The Will, and The Crypt is decidedly MG, but when the withered mummy shows up on a dark and stormy night…dude. That was creepy in fourth or fifth grade, no kidding. All of his kids’ books are awesome, some moreso than others, but none of which are merely passable. It was such a shame to lose Mr. Bellairs, and he’s someone I wish I could’ve met. I don’t hear his name crop up during discussions about scary books for kids, and I’m usually met with blank stares when I mention his name on panels and the like. This is truly too bad, and I hope you’ll give him a whirl. Start with The Curse of the Blue Figurine, or go straight to Mummy, whichever. But you can’t pick a bad one. (The possible exception are the novels released after his death, which were completed by someone else. Eh…I get it? But you can sort of “taste the difference.” )

Now, listen, let me couch what I’m about to say quite carefully, all right? I love Goosebumps. And Fear Street. They came around after I was past the age of his target audience, but only just barely, and I still (proudly!) have an almost complete collection of the original GB series. And yeah, I still read them. But let’s be serious: Stine is to kid lit as Saw 12 is to fine cinema, no? Oh, it might be fun. Maybe even one or two are memorable. They might even give you a chill or two. But can you give me three protagonists by name? I tried this and came up with: Carly Beth and Slappy. That’s one protagonist, and one villain. That’s it. I remember the endings to many of them (since endings were really what they were all about, other than manufactured page-turning cliffhangers). Compare this to Johnny, the Professor, or Fergie from Bellair’s Mummy series. Or Lewis Barnavelt, Uncle Jonathan, and Rose Rita. Bellairs wrote characters; Stine wrote sit-coms.

That’s not a complaint! It’s not even a fact, it’s just an opinion. Bellairs has a damn near literary quality to him that Stine doesn’t, and that’s okay. But what I wonder is, is there room for that kind of literary kids’ fiction? Is that what I’m even writing? (Don’t break your arm pattin’ yourself there, skippy, amiright?) Has the old guard of librarians already passed, to be replaced by fresh, young librarians who have no idea who Bellairs is? The thought is chilling. Which I guess is appropriate…

Anyway. I’m still researching this, and think maybe I’ll even pitch it as an article. Meanwhile, I’m watching my first film The Moon Daemon, shot on an ancient VHS videocamera, wherein the VHS unit itself had to be carted around seperately from the camera. Yeah, I’m that old.

But one last thing about The Moon Daemon. (Chad? Don? You out there?) And this ties in more specifically to the message I always try to convey at my school visits and other panels.

Three 13-14 year olds improvised a three-act structure script (we had no actual script, we literally made up the scene as we went along. Yes, it shows.), shot it, edited it, and put it together. Silly, even stupid? Yes. But so much fun. And we did it. Several adults, including my dad and at least one teacher, helped us get it done, and even let us screen it at school.

More of that for our kids, please. Much, much more of that.

Happy Halloween…in June.

(P.S. I’ll be at Changing Hands on June 17 at 1 pm to be part of a reader’s group for ZERO. Hope you can make it!)

So I was reading this message board earlier in which the casual question was asked, “If science suddenly proved 100% for sure that the Mayans were right and the world’s going to end in December…what would you do today?” A fair and fun question, and once you — meaning, I — stop looking at it critically (the utter and complete breakdown of global society, etc.) the end purpose is, of course, to see what your priorities really are or ought to be.

The thing is, and I mentioned this in PARTY, you can’t functionally live each day like it was your last. You can’t. Or, you could, but you’d end up broke, in prison, and/or dead very quickly. I, for one, would immediately resume unhealthy habits that I fought for years to get rid of, and it’s only because I choose to assume and hope I’ll be around long enough to enjoy the long term benefits of having quit.

But what you can do is assess what you really want outta this gig. When I go to schools and tell students they can do anything, there are realities to contend with, sure. If the entire room wants to be NFL quarterbacks, well…that’s probably not gonna happen. True enough.

My argument is this: If you relentlessly pursue that goal, you will find other opportunities opening up that may make you even happier, and certainly no less happy, than if you’d gotten the big dream.

I always wanted to be a movie star (who doesn’t?). Some of my theatre friends and I always just assumed that’s where life would take us. Well, it didn’t.  (Thank goodness.) But I spent 11 years having a great time doing shows with my own theatre company. I had three great years of music and theatre and art at Chyro Arts Venue. I wouldn’t trade those for anything. I even got to make some very fun and very low budget movies with my best friends. Totally worth it. [That link is NSFW; language!]

So maybe you won’t be an NFL quarterback. But have you ever considered how many jobs are associated with just one NFL broadcast game? All the TV positions, all the on-field positions, all the behind-the-scenes positions? Going after that first goal will, I promise you, reveal and open doors you hadn’t even thought of.

You can’t live every day like it was your last. You gotta pay the bills. You have to hope and plan for tomorrow. But for crying out loud, don’t use that as an excuse to give up and just watch TV all night. Whatever it is out there that you want to do, go do it, and don’t let anyone stop you.

In other news:

ZERO comes out April 24! There will be a big release party at Changing Hands, so please come! And please get your copy that day or week from a brick and mortar store. It’ll help me and it’ll help them and, I daresay, ultimately it will help you. Bookstores and libraries are among those thing you might not realize how much are missed until it’s too late.

Speaking of Changing Hands, don’t miss this year’s Yallapalooza at the downtown Phoenix library. Classes and authors and signings and food and…just be there, it’s going to be sweet!

Take care,

~ Tom

If you follow me on Facebook (and you SHOULD!) you may have noticed a few recent posts about mix tapes.

First, I have to say, I feel bad for the youngin’s out there who will never fully appreciate this lost art. John Cusak in High Fidelity has a great speech about mix tapes that well-encapsulates their essence, magic, and, I daresay, necessity in figuring out one’s own pet angst.

Take this lovely doozy as a for-instance: The title of the mix is APOLOGLIES. (Read that carefully. Neat little word trick there, no?) Some of the song titles include Don’t Come Around Here No More; Sell Out; Bang and Blame; Beat on the Brat; Broken Circles; Indifference…

Cripes, who was I so mad at in December of 1994?

Then there’s the apparently bleak, oppressive, thoroughly hopeless Christmas of ’92. Mix title: Can I Have Some Time Alone? (cribbed, of course, from R.E.M.’s backing vocals on It’s The End of the World As We Know It). This lil beauty includes such Christmas gems as The God That Failed; Losing My Religion; Born to Lose; Sorrow; Am I Evil; and, yes, It’s The End of the World.

You’ll be happy to learn, I hope, that I feel much better now. Merry Christmas!

As I mentioned on Facebook, I’m sort of appalled at how many of these songs I’m just flat-out missing. Some I have no idea who the band is. I don’t have the tapes anymore; these are just the paper sleeves that went into the cassette cases. Something else Today’s Youth won’t ever understand: New Tape Smell. Who’s with me?! Man, I haven’t smelled a new cassette tape in forever. Geez. Now I need to go make a mix tape.

Anyhow, it seems appropriate that I should be sorting through these paper sleeves just as R.E.M. is disbanding, because they feature so prominently on these mix tapes. I was one of the world’s biggest R.E.M. fans for a long time. That time passed awhile back, but I still appreciate them, and still enjoy the music. Just not on quite the rotation as in years past. Thanks, fellas.

Bring back the mix tape! There’s far too much consolation to be had in their creation. Making a “playlist” is a poor substitute for decorating a sleeve. Where’s the art? Where’s the painstaking wait as you listen to each song as it records? None of this drag-and-drop crap; I want a dual-tape deck, man. I want to be alone in my room and tell my posters that no one understands!

Okay, I still do that, so, happily, some things don’t ever change.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a third novel of mine coming out in 2013, and I’m right in the middle of my first round of revisions. And, as I do for all my novels, I’ve created a playlist for it…but it’s not the same. Still! Always good to back and mine the insanity of high school for plot fodder. (Plot Fodder, also a good name for a band.)

In other news: Toby is cute. That is all. ZERO comes out in less than six months!

Wow. So it was a year ago today that PARTY first hit the shelves. A lot has happened — but then, isn’t that true for all of us?

LOOKING BACK:

I discovered two things that I love most about this job: The book people, and the reader people. I’ve met the most amazing booksellers, educators, and authors this year, and I’m indebted to all of them for helping me out along the way. It’s amazing how many awesome authors live in Arizona. And there’s more on the way. But they’re not just good writers; they are great people. Lisa McMann, Robin Brande, Jon Lewis, James Owen, Janette Rallison, Aprilynne Pike…and those’re just the authors. I’ve met friends of friends who I now call my friends too, who love a mean game of Apples to Apples and who sincerely love books and those who write them. I’m just one lucky son-of-a to have met them all.

Then there’s the students I get to talk to at the various high schools and libraries. They’re the real thing, and the real reason I want to do this for the rest of my life. The stories I’ve heard from them and from their teachers and administrators has made me so angry I couldn’t see straight. I am constantly appalled at how many parents out there really don’t get it. For awhile I thought that my PARTY characters were merely vague mirrors of me (and they are) as a high school student. After meeting so many teenagers, though, I realize that people like Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, Morrigan’s parents, are more common than I’d thought.

It’s pretty much my mission in life now to reach as many teens as I can and let them know they can do anything. Sure, there’s a certain measure of “being realistic” that maybe should be observed…but honestly, all said and done, teenagers are biologically wired to be reckless, and I think they should be. Not in a life-threatening way, of course; not in a drink-and-drive kind of way, not at all. I mean in a “I can accomplish anything” way. That’s the message, and I won’t stop saying it. Deal.

Since PARTY, I’ve sold my second novel, ZERO, which should be out about a year from now. So that rocks. I’ve got seven or eight novels in the works at present, I’ve gotten to speak at conferences and write articles, I’ve gotten to teach classes. All in all — a great year. And I saw none of it coming.

LOOKING AHEAD:

So there’s ZERO, and I’m excited to see it finally on the shelves. There’s another couple of possible projects being discussed, but I don’t think I can comment any more than that on it just yet. I’m hoping to release a “new” chapter of PARTY as a free PDF soon, and with a little luck, at some point I hope to have an audiobook ready to go. Time’ll tell.

Then there’s the baby.

Why do I have seven or eight books cooking right now? Because come August, I simply have no idea how exactly my life and schedule is going to change. There’s  a baby boy on the way, and…I just don’t know. I can’t wait to meet him, I know that much. I also know that I can’t not write, but I don’t know when or how just yet. I’ll have to ask him.

I’m working on getting a regularly scheduled video blog/vlog/whatever going, but my technology is not currently cooperating. I’m planning on some live-stream events, and am getting setup to do Skype visits. Here’s hoping that all works out!

Mostly, I just want to say thank you to all the readers, all the reviewers (yes, good and bad alike…both are instructive). I’ve gotten to do what I always dreamed of doing, and it’s sometimes unreal. But it should go to show you that anything is possible.

Hear me? Anything.

See ya.

It’s tech week for Romeo and Juliet. (And tix are available online at Showup.com, only $11.50 if you buy online, $15 at the door. Do the math.) Tech week basically means I have a hundred other things I should be doing other than updating my blog…

But some of those things include non-R&J related items, like homework. And revisions for ZERO (due in Spring 2012! Yay!). Also, laundry.

It’s been more than a year since I last directed a show, Talk Radio, at the now-departed Chyro Arts Venue. And like every one of the thirty-five shows I’ve directed since 1990 (starting with a terrifically maudlin and wholly angsty original play called I Want To Be Free…yeah, let that genius title sink in for a moment), it all comes down to the cast.

I don’t mean their skill or talent, which this cast has in abundance. I will always stand by my casting – any directing skill I may have is about 90% finding the actors who can make sense of my direction and do a phenomenal job despite what I tell them to do.

I had opportunities to Make Something Of Myself in theatre, both as an actor and a director, and pretty much passed them up to go it alone. I’ve never regretted those choices, though I confess sometimes I wonder “What If.” No, I’m an author of young adult novels, the best freaking job ever invented (and it was largely invented). Writing is where I belong, and I’d be doing it whether there was money involved or not.

…just like theatre.  I think I’ve been paid three, maybe four times to direct. Grand total: Maybe a thousand bucks (spread over 22 years). I do this directing thing from time to time for two reasons.

One, it’s instant gratification storytelling. I know that in six to eight weeks, I will have a completed product, a completed story. Novel writing can take two years or more from start to finish.

Two – it’s the people. The cast and crew. The audience. This R&J cast, like so many before, are just great people, period. Some actors have enormous resumes, others are making their debut. And every one of them has worked hard, laughed hard, and made the entire experience a reminder of why I love to direct plays. You become family when you produce a show. Sometimes, great and lasting friendships develop. More than once I’ve had cast members end up marrying.

Pretty sweet.

So if you’re in the area, or want to – you know – fly in for the night, then come take a look at our production of Romeo and Juliet.  (Chicks With Swords! Can’t beat that.) Hopefully I’ll get some video or photos posted to my Facebook soon.

Curtain going up…

Happy New Year!

So the holidays are officially over, I guess.  In the last three hours, I’ve been contacted to do three school visits; received word that revisions for book #2 are en route tomorrow; and had some terrible oatmeal that is threatening to ruin my night of  – wait for it – Social Distortion, live in concert.

Okay, so, the oatmeal thing is unrelated to the holidays, it’s just pissing me off.  I hate “stomach issues.” Headache, cold, flu, stroke, coronary, a face-ectomy…fine. Just don’t let me be queasy, it’s all I ask.

In other news, giant Woo Hoo’s to A.S. King, Robin Brande, and Adam Rex for various and sundry book awards this week!  Now I want one! All the cool kids got ’em…  Okay, no, seriously — one thing I am always happy to tell people about my line of work is the true awesomeness that is YA authors.  I’ve had a chance to meet so many this past year, and made great friends among them.  I love the writing.  I love the school visits.  I love the booksellers and Book Babes.  And I love that the other authors I get to hang out with now are just so friendly, encouraging, and funny.  It was enough to get a book on the shelves; to gain new friends is something I’d never considered.  Me = lucky sucka.  And congratulations to everyone on the various lists!  Well earned.

Speaking of which — authors, not belches — don’t miss the next YAllapalloza at Changing Hands on Saturday January 29!  The list of cool people who will be there is too long to list here, but hit the website, see for yourself: it’s gonna rock.

If you’re in the area and looking for a fun writing class experience, I’ll be at Scottsdale’s Mustang Library January 22 at 1 pm to teach a class.

Finally, get ready for a Romeo and Juliet like you’ve never seen.  People are gettin’ killed before the first line gets spoken.  It’s going to be awesome.  And I’m directing it!  February 25 – March 12 in Scottsdale.  Only $11 bucks when you pre-order online! C’mon, that’s sweet.  Links, photos, and more forthcoming.

Thus with a kiss, I die.  From bad oatmeal.

P.S. You are awesome.

“Happy Halloween, ladies…”

(That’s a quote from Highlander, as you know.)  In the spirit of the holiday, here’s my list of films and etc. that have absolutely scared the s**t out of me.

TOURIST TRAP
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080040/

This is either A) Stephen King’s favorite movie, or B) the movie that most terrified Stephen King. Either way, I didn’t even know King existed until about 8 years after I rented this seemingly B film after we got our first VCR, one of those monsters that is about the size of a modern day microwave. Why on earth my parents never, once, previewed a rental I made, I’ll never know.  Here is where my terror of all things animated began.  Not cartoons; oh no, we’re talking about ventriliquist dummies, manniquins, stuffed animals…anything that should not be walking and talking yet is somehow Undead.  I still have trouble watching this one.  (Of course I own it; I bought the DVD about two years before I owned a DVD player.)  These days, though, Chuck Conners (!) is more scary than the living manniquins of the movie. He pastes up a supple young lady’s face with plaster, while narrating her own death to her:  “And now the eyes…you’ll never see the sun again…it’s getting hard to breathe…you’ll die of fright long before you run out of air…”

Did I mention I was like, six?  Yeah.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082235/

This is still an awesome movie, so says me and my dad.  This one was made for TV; no gore, not that much violence really, but the ending…I remember watching this with a then-girlfriend one night, and she didn’t make a sound until the second-to-last cutaway, when she leaped into the air screaming, “NO F****** WAY!!!”  I spent about $80 on a hard-to-find copy of this gem for my dad.  Haven’t seen it in awhile; it’d probably still scare me too much at the end.  Gave me nightmares for, oh, a year?  Two?  But again, anything even remotely bespeaking of an animated scarecrow does me in.  (See also “Friday the 13th: The Series” pilot with the china doll and R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps book and TV show, “The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight.”)

TRIOLOGY OF TERROR
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073820/

The Zuni fetish doll has become a cult favorite, and for good reason.  The first two stories are yawners, largely, but the — wait for it — tiny animated doll that comes to life and terrorizes a lady with a knife…yep, there they are, goosebumps even as I write this.  Part of it was the shrieking sound effects the little doll made when he chased her around the apartment.  Beautiful.

No, seriously: I have goosebumps, right this second.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (Honorable mention)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/

If you know me even a little, you know I have a preoccupation with zombies. In fact, I don’t even watch that many zombie movies because they freak me out.  NotLD deserves a special mention not because the movie itself freaked me out — it didn’t, but it’s a great f’ing movie — but because I used to sleep with the TV on in my room, and one night, I woke up just at the time the newscasters in the movie are talking about the living dead, and steps people should take to remain safe.  I was turned away from the TV and only heard the voice.  And, honest to heck, I didn’t even move.  I just lay there staring at the wall, literally thinking — I am not making this up — I knew it!  Dammit!  I told you people, I KNEW this was gonna happen!  Okay…gotta board up the windows.  Or get to the Suburban and get out of town…

Took about five minutes to realize it was NotLD.  Thanks, George.  That was kinda cool.  (And they are coming, some day, just you wait.)

THE EXORCIST (Honorable Mention)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/

Now, this movie was on TV (!) once when I was little, and I watched it, and it gave me exactly one nightmare, but I was like, 5.  Didn’t think much about it until I was in my 20’s, when I realized I didn’t know what all the hubbub was about, so I rented it.  Watched it in my room.  Watched the special features first (which I do as a way to nullify any potentially scary effects in the movie; now I’ve seen how it was done, so it chills me out).

Then I started the movie.  About ten minutes in, if that, I felt really weird.  Sorta nauseous.  So I shut off the movie and stood up to choose a different movie, assuming I was getting worked up from the anxiety/panic disorder I had at the time.  My head swam, and I heard a thunk, and I woke up on my floor.

Passed.  The hell.  Out.

It’s the only time in my life that’s ever happened, and it is not fun.  I have no idea if it was the movie or something else, but I will never try to watch that film again.  So I couldn’t tell you if it scared me or not.

WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

I read a lot of Koontz’s early work, and liked it well enough, but Watchers is something special.  The characterization was great, and his tension building up to the first time we see the creature is first rate.  I need to read this one again soon.

(And what’s up with the dropped “R”, Dean? You will always have an R to me, my friend.)

ZOMBIE: A NOVEL by Joyce Carol Oates

Not a novel about an actual undead zombie, but rather about a serial killer…from his point of view. Not scary, per se, but POV is everything when you read a seemingly insignificant line like, “I bought an icepick today.”  (Think about it.)  Oates is far too prolific for me to have read all her works, but I’ve never been disappointed when I do read her.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE AT TOWER PLAZA, 1988
Freshman year.  All I really remember is that the Thomas Mall haunted house attraction was lame, and everyone knew it, but the Tower Plaza one was supposed to be WAY scary.  I remember screaming a lot and trying to joke my through the whole event, to mixed results.  But I got a girlfriend out of it, so.  And the one at Thomas Mall really was lame.

On the way to a weekend camp to volunteer as a dishwasher, circa 1991
Everything was fine that night till we hit the deserted dirt road winding through the evergreen trees up north, the darkness pierced only by our headlights.  That’s when my “Good Buddy Joel” started whispering behind me: Che-che-che…ah-ah-ah, that notorious old Friday the 13th chanted bastardization of “Jason-kill” that we all know and love.  I coulda effing killed him myself for that one.  Jerk.

Conclusion: Confessions of a reformed horror buff.

I really did grow up on this stuff.  All the worst B-movies (Demons; Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-a-rama; the entire Friday the 13th ouvre until about chapter 7; etc.)  And I still enjoy my R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike books.  Raised myself on Stephen King through grade, junior, and high school.  So horror and I are well acquainted.

Well, we were.

These days, I just can’t stomach it anymore.  You couldn’t pay me to watch Hostel or Saw…12? 13? Whatever.  I couldn’t handle Devil’s Rejects even a little, though I tried.  Maybe it’s a natural function of growing the hell up.  Next week I’m watching B movies with some of my best friends and giving them our usual MST3K-ing.  That’s still fun.

But I don’t have a taste for the horrific that I used to.

Maybe it’s just that real life got in the way, and I prefer my escapes to be a little more tame now. Maybe after watching real-life footage of an explosion in Iraq that damn near killed one of my best friends, blowing stuff up and fighting monsters doesn’t have the same appeal.

But these old films, the old books and TV shows (World Beyond; Twilight Zone; Alfred Hitchcock Presents; old time radio dramas like Escape, X Minus One, Suspense, all those) I still love.  I can handle them.  The trend toward torture porn just makes me queasy.  If that’s your cup o’ blood, more power to ya, but I have to say, once you see those images, you can’t get rid of them.  They are in there for life.  How they could possibly be beneficial to you later on in life is beyond me.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

But when the zombies come, bet your chainsaw I’ll be ready.  That’s probably why I’m currently revising a novel about them.  (Sidebar: I did like Zombieland a lot, though.  Probably because it was about the people, not the zombies.)

Braaaaaaaains!!!

Have a safe and happy Halloween, and if you’re in town, come see Halloween LIT at Changing Hands!