Oh Look: It's The Post That Ate The World

So I cc’d my list to Steve, and found out that he hadn’t read almost any of them (aside from "The Room in the Tower", since it’s pretty hard to adapt something you have no direct knowledge of). Really odd. I mean, granted, he’s far more science fiction/fantasy than horror in his inclinations, but some of these are science fiction. Steve says it’s because he’s always been more a novel person than a short story person, and I guess I can understand that. But not me—one of the first "adult" books I remember reading was that seminal Best Of science fiction collection I took "The Small Assassin", "Cold Equations" aand "Country of the Kind" from…all Hugo winners, maybe? (It also had Robert Silverberg’s "Born of Man and Woman" in it. Oh, and "It’s A Good Life", too.)

I’ve always read collections. For a long time, I think I sort of thought that horror novels were the exceptions rather than the rule. Of course, that all changed once I got caught up in the first horror rush of the 1980s—but then again, it might have had equally as much to do with the fact that when I was nine and ten, reading the backs of horror novels in supermarket lines was enough to scare the crap out of me. I can still remember the jacket copy for James Herbert’s The Survivor, along with its slick, embossed cover: Those naked doll-eyes staring up at your out of the darkness. Nothing could have possibly lived up to the stuff I saw inside my head.

Sort of like when I finally tracked down The Half-Angels, years after reading part of it standing up in an airport bookstore—wow, was THAT a let-down. And with that cover, too! It had convinced me for years that the sexiest, dirties, most adult thing in the world was to watch some naked witch get eaten alive by a gigantic snake arching up out of an abyss. (Which it sort of still is, even now…but only within the context of Ken Russell’s Lair of the White Worm. And only if the person doing the snake-feeding is a gorgeous bisexual woman encrusted in blue paint from head to toe, wearing a gigantic pointed wooden dildo.)

At any rate: I’ve never taught any sort of short story course, which I sort of regret—short scripts are similar, but hardly the same. But if I was doing some sort of "Learn What Scares 101" curriculum, most of this stuff would definitely be on it—it runs the gamut from shock to creep, with big heaping side-orders of dark poetry and grand guignol (often in the same selections). And naturally, even after my initial revisions, I’ve already remembered even more stuff I should have put on: "Close Behind Him" by John Wyndham, "Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird" by Sonya Dorman, "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" by Tom Reamy, "A Toy for Juliette" by Robert Bloch, "Carrion Comfort" by Dan Simmons.

Perhaps, in this slightly post-literate age, there are many more people out there who—like Steve—have just never had the good fortune to meet up with these stories before; man, that sucks for them. Because I truly think that if everyone who wanted to write horror got the chance to breeze by at least fifty per cent of these babies, their prose would end up much the better for it.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the weekend’s been its usual mix of fun and frustrating. Going to see Steve’s parents on Saturday turned out to be pretty good, not least because Cal’s older cousins were unable to attend, which meant he and his younger cousin Annula got most of the attention. She’s a cutie who can talk already, and got very shirty about him monopolizing her grandmother, Steve’s Aunt Joyce, who was amazing at drawing Cal out—too bad they all live in Hamilton. We also tried two new things: Not giving him bottles during the day (which he actually seems fine with—we just give him drinks in sippy cups instead, and lo and behold, he actually drinks them) and not taking the stroller with us when we go out. Sunday we made a trip up to the Eaton’s Centre for new shoes and new clothes for him (both paid for by Mom) and a new shirt for me (on my dime); he conked out halfway through, and Steve felt like a bit of a packhorse, but we had Steve Snr.’s car to get back in, so it all work out well. We also brough the booster seat back out from storage, since Mom has amply demonstrated that belting him to a chair before distracting/feeding him really does help him "stand still" (ha ha) for dinner. Next up, the potty.

Last night, Steve and I also finally had The Talk, tm—ie, after looking through this massive Autism Spectrum Disorder PDF she sent us a link to, he finally admitted that he too was worried by Cal’s behaviour and wasn’t sure that it would ever improve. This is a big, big thing for him—Steve—and may finally lead to him not acting like Mom and I are insane when we voice similar fears and/or want things done for Cal. Still two and a half months ‘til the assessment, but we’re not going to spend the intervening time just sitting on our thumbs. So that’s good, or at least better. Potentially. If it doesn’t turn into the "oh, poor me, my son might be on the Spectrum, I’m so depressed I can barely react to him or keep my own end up," show.

So far, so good. We took Cal to the Riverdale Zoo today, let him run and wade himself into oblivion, then sacked out ourselves (is there such a thing as being alergic to sunlight? Because I’m beginning to think that all of us are). Tonight, I have to finish and submit my latest book review to Rue Morgue, then turn around and start writing trivia questions again—turns out, we undercut the load to the tune of 200, which means we’re probably going to be doing far more of that this week that I had hitherto thought; fun, wow. Still, God knows at this point, I’m at least used to it.

And what else? Since I’ve obviously bellyflopped on Novel_in_90 this time ‘round, I’m once more taking stock of my unfinished work and trying to figure out what to concentrate on for September’s session. I’ve also been thinking very seriously about putting another collection together, if only in order to give my fans something fresh to buy. Of course, of the few stories that I’ve completed over the last few years (!), some are either about to be committed ("Words Written Backwards", hopefully) or still committed ("Pen Umbra"—though seriously, have any of you actually seen a version of Thrillers 2 out there?; "Every Angel" (have to check about availability issues re Loonie Dreadful stuff); "Dead Voices on Air"; "Jack-Knife"). At the moment, the Big List goes like this:

Never published:
"The Jacaranda Smile" (5, 938)
"The Speed of Pain" (6,760—needs to be rewritten)
"Marya Nox" (3,976)
"The Anniversary" (837)
"Loop" (859—needs to be rewritten)

Published and/or committed:
"Words Written Backwards" (11,850—owed to Burning Effigy)
"Landscape with Maps & Legends: Dead Voices On Air" (9,060)
"Heart’s Hole: Time, the Revelator Remix" (5,763—this is actually the original version, cut down for inclusion in Tightrope Books’In The Dark)
"Spectral Evidence" (3,423)
"Pen Umbra" (21,024)
"Jack-Knife" (6,176)
"Villa Locusta" (5,453)
"Every Angel" (7,721)

To be completed:
Strange Weight (8,000+)
History’s Crust (7,000?)
Secret People (4,000?)
Where Have You Been, My Long-Lost Love, These Seven Long Years and More? (7,000?)
Under These Rocks and Stones (8,000?)
Helpless (6,000?)
Mors Certans (3,000?)
Drone (3000?)
Dust-Bowl (3000?)
Digging (3000?)
Host (3,000?)

Of that last bunch, the first six are all set inside what I’ve come to call my Toronto: Crossroads City universe—like "The Narrow World" and what will hopefully become The Speed of Pain the book, like Nobody and "Words Written Backwards", like "Dead Voices on Air", they share a background and cast of characters that I’ve been playing with for years. (Oh, and "Spectral Evidence", "Marya Nox" and "Pen Umbra" all share the Freihoeven Institute as a backdrop and Carraclough Devize as a character, so they link up with "The Narrow World" as well.) Similarly, "Villa Locusta" and "Every Angel" share the same Terrible Seven mythology as my unfinished novel Blood From The Air, which means that some of the last five stories might eventually morph into representative samples of that universe, too. So it’s all, really, part of the same damn universe. Get it?;)

I could try and organize little collections around characters, I suppose: Republish "The Emperor’s Old Bones" and package it with "The Speed of Pain", for example. Same thing with "The Narrow World" and "Pen Umbra" (a much bigger two-fer). Collect all the Five Family Coven stuff together (starting with "Heart’s Hole"). Collect all the Freihoeven tales. Collect all the Terrible Seven tales—after all, with "Every Angel" and "Villa Locusta", that’s three of them down already! "Words Written Backwards" and "Strange Weight" (once finished) will predate Nobody (once finished)—Young Judy Kiss and Young Maccabee Roke adventures. And although I have three chapters and a prologue of Blood From The Air finished, maybe Nobody really is the thing to set my shoulder to…just let it come out how it comes out, even if it’s only the size of Clive Barker’s Cabal, or what have you. There must be somebody out there who’ll give a fuck.

Arrrgh, and now my head is spinning, if not hurting. So please, chime in: What do you think about all/any of this? (Please keep in mind that I really don’t think I can go back and deal with the people who did my first two collections; frankly, I’m not even sure they’d want me to. So whatever advice any of you might be able to give me in that direction would also be very much appreciated.)