Good review for me, discounted books for you

1. VOICES FROM HADES reviewed

Yep, a fine review of my book VOICES FROM HADES (a short story collection set in the Hades of my novels THE FALL OF HADES and LETTERS FROM HADES) appeared recently on the web site TheDeepening.com:

“ Jeffrey Thomas writes about heaven and hell as we have never seen or imagined them…Voices From Hades paints an incredible picture of what heaven and hell could actually be. Jeffrey Thomas does this through stories one just cannot fault. This is a collection that doesn’t so much hang together as it is a beautiful tapestry of words that take us to a place never imagined. And in the most sordid and ghastly of places, Thomas shows us time and time again what the human spirit is and can do. This disturbs, but when a demon cries because an artist offers him a form of individual immortality, one cannot deny the beauty found within all this horror. Terrific book. An accomplishment Jeffrey Thomas can be proud of.”

Read the review: http://www.thedeepening.com/horror/2010/04/23/voices-from-hades-by-jeffrey-thomas/

Order the book: http://www.darkregions.com/products/Voices-From-Hades-by-Jeffrey-Thomas.html

2. Scary guns, scary books

With every copy of the deluxe edition of my new novel THE FALL OF HADES, Dark Regions Press has been giving away a free, handpainted sculpture of the novel’s sentient demonic gun Jay, as createrd by cover artist Frank Walls. Well, now for those of you who want a less expensive edition of the book but would still like a copy of this sculpture, Dark Regions is now offering fifty copies of the gun sculpture for sale separately. Here’s the place to check it out:

http://www.darkregions.com/products/The-Fall-of-Hades-Living-Gun-sculpture.html

More good news: several of my Dark Regions Press books have been deeply discounted — these being my short story collection DOOMSDAYS and my recent supernatural horror novel, THOUGHT FORMS. (Five bucks off each book!) They, along with work by my brother Scott Thomas and other talented authors, can be ordered here:

http://www.darkregions.com/categories/Discounted-Items/

3. New Jeffrey Thomas forum

Finally, Dark Regions Press has set up forums for its authors, so I have a new message board at their site. For a fun way to encourage return visitors, I’ve created a round robin story thread, in which I invite people to continue a story I began — taking it in any direction they please. So come check it out, add your own little piece to the story, or just say hi. Whaddya say?

My new discussion forum: http://www.darkregionspress.com/viewforum.php?f=29

Monsters and Cowboys

Naturally, when you’re a writer you end up making the acquaintance of other writers — in these cyberpunkish times, usually through the likes of email, Facebook and whatnot. It’s very rewarding, and often in a literal sense: I tend to exchange copies of my own books with these fellow scribes. And in addition to having the pleasure of reading the work of some author you hadn’t encountered before, chances are he/she is going to tell others about you, whether it be in a review at Amazon or a mention on their blog. And so it is that I’d like to give a little plug here for two such authors of my recent acquaintance, who gifted me with stories that were entertaining indeed!

TEMPORARY MONSTERS, Ian Rogers

This is a chapbook from Burning Effigy Press, out of Ian’s native Canada. It’s nicely produced, with a very effective cover image of an ominous-looking Toronto, and streaking tailights like a spray of arterial blood. The story involves private investigator Felix Renn, who has the unfortunate knack of running into vampires and werewolves at every turn. See, this is an alternate reality, alongside which exists an even weirder reality called the Black Lands, a supernatural realm peopled by untold species of nasty creatures. TEMPORARY MONSTERS revolves around Toronto’s motion picture business, and has plenty of mystery, action, and intriguing characters, with a nicely textured relationship between Renn and his estranged wife. This definitely feels like an introduction for Felix Renn, who deserves a much larger story in which to conduct his sleuthing and monster-fighting, but Ian has just such a project up his sleeve and I’d advise some publisher out there to pick it up. This could be a series with a lot of commercial potential. And the story in this chapbook might make a good movie, too.

You can order TEMPORARY MONSTERS here: https://www.horror-mall.com/TEMPORARY-MONSTERS-by-Ian-Rogers-chapbook-p-20283.html

A FISTFUL OF HOLLERS, featuring Whitt Pond

This is a trade paperback collection of humorous stories of the Wild West, from CyberAliens Press and edited by Crystalwizard, Lyn Perry, and Y. B. Cats. To give you an idea of the proceedings, the cover features a steampunk robot with a tea kettle head, a T-Rex, and a tentacled critter. This last beasty is represented in a story by Whitt Pond, who like me lives in Massachusetts, like me is married to a Vietnamese woman, but who hails originally from Texas — hence his having written his contribution to this anthology, entitled LAW WEST OF THE MISKATONIC. Yep, the Miskatonic River, so you know this one’s going to bring that old Yankee Mr. Lovecraft out West for a spell. It’s a very fun read — involving necromancy and a thingie called the Lurker, and a saloon that doubles as a courtroom — and left me wanting to see more of what Whitt can do in the future, be it crazy humor like this or something straighforward. Either way, I’m game.

You can order A FISTFUL OF HOLLERS here: http://cyberaliens.webs.com/apps/webstore/products/show/1474938

Hell in Your Mailbox

(The Brothers Thomas: Scott, left, Jeffrey, right, standing in front of a painting by our late father, Robert.)

Dark Regions Press has just announced that my horror/science fiction/dark fantasy/new weird/slipstream/kitchen sink novel THE FALL OF HADES is in stock and ready to ship. I recently received a couple sample copies of the trade paperback edition — and they are lovely, lovely things — but those will be available to order further down the road. I’m talking about the signed hardcover edition with its shiny and purty library-style dustjacket to resist the wear and tear of your filthy talons. Yeah, sure, it’s a wee bit pricey, but how many groceries will that amount buy you these days? Whereas my novel is a FEAST for the imagination that you can glut yourself on again and again. So go order THE FALL OF HADES at the new, improved Dark Regions Press web site:

http://www.darkregions.com/products/The-Fall-of-Hades-by-Jeffrey-Thomas.html

(And there are still copies available of the deluxe lettered edition, which comes in a traycase and is accompanied by a hand-painted sculpture of “Jay,” the novel’s sentient demonic gun — like the cover, a creation of the gifted Frank Walls.)

Oh, and the latest Dark Regions newsletter further states, “The grand opening special is still going on, but not much longer!  For a limited time place any order on the new DarkRegions.com website and have your choice between Song of Silver by Sarah A. Hoyt, Over the Darkening Fields by Scott Thomas, Garden of Ghosts by Scott Thomas and more!  Click here for more info.“ Not to knock any other authors, but I highly recommend grabbing a freebie of my brother Scott’s brilliant, chilling collection OVER THE DARKENING FIELDS. I supplied the photo used on the cover, by the way — a gravestone from Salem, MA.

I’m a DVD Extra: NEVER SLEEP AGAIN

This past January when I was on vacation in Vietnam, I went to a local internet cafe to check my email and was very pleasantly surprised to find a message from Lito Velasco, Co-Producer of a documentary called NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY. Heather Langenkamp, Nancy in the first and two other of the A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET films, was Executive Producer and would provide narration (and she also would be autographing a poster to accompany every copy of the DVD). In any case, Lito asked me if it might be possible to interview me for the documentary, since in 2006 Black Flame released an original ANOES novel they had commissioned from me, titled A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM DEALERS.

I was delighted, of course, but like some others who were interviewed for the documentary I couldn’t get to California to be interviewed in person. Therefore, I arranged to be filmed and interviewed by my friend Jason Torrey, director of the cool direct-to-DVD movies “Into My Sickness” and “God Is Alone” (both of which I acted in, by the way), in Jason’s apartment.

Today I received a copy I ordered, and it’s a very impressive documentary, very slick and professional (after all, Co-Director David Farrands produced the horror film A HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT), opening with a fun stop-motion animation sequence. There are two disks (over 240 minutes of content between them!), and my interview bits appear on the second, Special Features disk, in a chapter called: “Expanding the Elm Street Universe: Freddy in Comic Books and Novels.” For this feature, the filmmakers very nicely edited together short bits from interviews with the writers so as to present them in a kind of “roundtable” format. Three little bits from my interview are included, but I’m happy for their inclusion and I get to explain how I approached my own novel (which takes place a few years in the future and involves some SF elements) with the thought, “What if David Cronenberg were to direct a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie?” At which point they show a photo of Cronenberg. Anyway, very gratifying to be a part of this, and I was happy to see Jason Torrey credited for his camera work in the credits for this chapter, as well.

A very detailed, fun, informative documentary that should fascinate not only A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET fans, but anyone interested in the process of making movies.

NEVER SLEEP AGAIN can be ordered from the documentary’s official web site, here:

http://www.elmstreetlegacy.com/

Or from Amazon.com, where today the movie is ranked an impressive 118 in the “Movies & TV” category:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003HFUVQI/?tag=jeffreythomas-20

Oh, and my novel A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: THE DREAM DEALERS is out of print, but copies can still be had (rather expensively, sorry) from Amazon, too:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844163830/?tag=jeffreythomas-20

Springsteen visits Punktown, Jeff visits Germany

I have three exciting books to discuss in this post, so since the last post was devoted entirely to my photo collection we’ll forego that feature this time around…

(1) DARKNESS ON THE EDGE, PS Publishing, Edited by Harrison Howe

I’ve discussed this anthology before, and today I received my contributor’s copy — one of 100 traycased copies (there are 500 regular hardcovers, as well, all autographed by each contributor). A lovely traycase it is, too: blue fabric exterior and blue velvet within. What should really grab you, though, is the terrific cover art by none other than J. K. Potter. A bunch of great authors are gathered here, and my own story is THE ROOM (no relation to the movie THE ROOM…I promise). As I’ve mentioned, the theme of the anthology is: take a diverse bunch of horror, SF and thriller writers and ask each to write a story inspired by (but not based directly on) one of the songs of Bruce Springsteen. I’m very happy with my effort, which finds its inspiration in the Boss’s song “Candy’s Room.” I manage to work in my favorite setting of Punktown, and Lovecraftian elements. This wonderful project was the brainchild of editor Harrison Howe, and I have to say, I’ve been in a lot of cool anthologies but this one has special meaning to me. For over thirty years I’ve not only been a Springsteen fan, but a Springstten fanatic — his passionate urban dramas, along with those of Martin Scorsese, were huge influences on my formulation of Punktown. This is a must have for horror readers and Springsteen aficianados alike.

One minor if unfortunate note: the second paragraph on page 182 is missing a line or two, things getting crunched together in a kind of distressingly messy way, and I hope it doesn’t pose too much of a stumble for readers. An edit was made here, but I think we writers looked at a galley proof, and if the error was in that proof then it’s my fault for not catching it. Oh well…other than that, the story reads well. And I’m immensely proud to be in this book! My dream, of course, is that Springsteen will read it, himself.

(2) PANDORA #4, Shayol, Edited by Hannes Riffel and Jakob Schmidt

I am very remiss indeed for not discussing this book earlier — a thousand apologies, Hannes and Jakob! PANDORA is an ongoing anthology series (it’s too thick, and beautiful, to simply call a publication), published in Germany by Shayol. For this edition I was asked if a translation could be made of my short story IN HIS SIGHTS, which originally appeared in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, volume 1. This story features as its protagonist Jeremy Stake, the morphing mutant private eye from my novels DEADSTOCK and BLUE WAR, but its action takes place a decade earlier, when young Stake returns traumatized from the “Blue War” on the extradimensional world of Sinan. (This is the story that inspired one American reader to write me and ask if James Cameron had based AVATAR on my work; ha, ironic given the name of this anthology, PANDORA.) My story as featured in PANDORA features nine illustrations by Caroline Kohler, and I love them; they’re stark, slashed in simple bold strokes, and give the feel of block prints. Below is Jeremy Stake in the guise of one of the blue-skinned natives of Sinan, complete with tribal scarification:

Following the story, to my pleasant surprise, there is a lengthy (eight pages of dense text) article about me, featuring ten cover images of my books and an author’s photo. No idea what is said here, but we’ll assume it’s good to warrant its existence! The article’s title is: “Die Burde der GroBen Alten abwerfen,” and the subheading reads, “Jeffrey Thomas und die Umwertung des Lovecraftschen Universums.” Yeah, I can figure out the “Lovecraft Universe” part, but maybe one of my German fans (calling Isabel Bader!) can enlighten me a little. So funny; this looks like the most detailed article about me ever written, but I can’t understand it myself! But I have to say, between this, my Punktown audio stories from Lausch, and of course my books from Festa Verlag, the Germans have been very supportive of my work, so I love ‘em! (One note: the cover image you see here features my name, but the copies I have substitute the name Wolfgang Jeschke. Well, I guess it’s only fair that a German publication should have at least one German writer on the cover!)

(3) NECROPHOBIA 3, Festa Verlag, Edited by Frank Festa

I received this in the mail, today, as well. In 2005, my story THE REFLECTIONS OF GHOSTS (my favorite Punktown short story) appeared in NECROPHOBIA 1, and this time around my story is the Lovecraftian (but Earth-based) story THE CELLAR GODS, again in German translation. I’m proud to be one of the anthology’s “Meister Der Angst” alongside such writers as Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, F. Paul Wilson and Karl Wagner. Festa Verlag is the publisher of the German-language editions of my novel MONSTROCITY and my collection PUNKTOWN (the hardcover edition of which features art by H. R. Giger, who also signed each copy)…and coming soon is a collection of my Cthulhu Mythos fiction from Festa. Below is a photo of the Master of Angst himself — the Original Angster, if you will — my buddy Frank Festa:

So whether you speak English, German, or speak in tongues, that should be enough for you to seek out and enjoy this time, my fellow angsters!

Getting Freaky

Well, this time I’ve got nothing to share but more pictures. And this time, no boastful/exploitative photos of my wife, I promise. (Hey, sex sells, baby, and I need all the help I can get!)

Above is the entrance to what pretty much amounted to a freak show — for “pickled punks” as carnies would call them, or rather pickled pigs, and other such animals — at the Suoi Tien amusement park in Saigon, from my July 2006 trip to Vietnam.

Above: well, this tragic creature speaks for itself (twice), doesn’t it? I can’t help but wonder if these aberrations are as a result of Agent Orange, which still lingers in Vietnam. In my wife Hong’s city of Bien Hoa, 95% of 43 people tested proved to have high levels of the dioxins used in Agent Orange. (As far as Hong is concerned, this might explain a lot…eh-hm.)

Above: If you think these poor pigs are upsetting, you should see the human fetuses (definitely attributed to Agent Orange) on display at the War Remnants Museum, also in Saigon. I took pictures — on my first Vietnam trip, in October of 2004 — but they’re not on photo CD so I can’t share them at this time.

Above: It looks like a whole herd of swine are bursting out of the back of this poor critter. I don’t know too much Vietnamese but I do know “HEO” means pig…I’m guessing “8 CHAN” means eight legs. (I don’t want to wake Hong up to ask her.)

Above: a sad embrace.

Above: “HEO 3 MAT” means pig with three eyes. And I didn’t even have to wake Hong up.

Above: Another poor pigling.

Above: Don’t ask me. But don’t worry, that’s not a human hand resting at the bottom, but the Monkey’s Paw. And finally, below , a mermaid-like Cyclops whose story is too sad to be told.

THE SPECTATORS are here

(1) It’s time to view THE SPECTATORS

I’ve previously called your attention to Darkside Digital, where my books BONELAND, TERROR INCOGNITA, and HONEY IS SWEETER THAN BLOOD have been released in digital editions. Now they’ve made available a new short story I wrote especially for them, called THE SPECTATORS. Here’s the description:

You wake to find a stranger in your home. An unearthly figure with skin like volcanic glass, as unmoving as a statue, staring into space. But it’s you the figure is watching. And you aren’t alone. There is one of these beings for every man, woman and child on Earth.

In Jeffrey Thomas’ eerie new short story, a mysterious race dubbed the Spectators has come to observe us in our homes. But where do they come from, and what do they hope to learn from us? What does their presence mean for humankind…and specifically, for one man who has reached the limits of personal suffering? The Spectators is a story about mysteries from beyond – and the mysteries we face each day, inside our hearts and minds – from the acclaimed author of Punktown and Letters From Hades.

(The following formats are available: PDF, MOBI (for Kindle & MobiPocket), EPUB)

A new Jeffrey Thomas story, for just $1.95 — how can you go wrong? The link is: https://www.horror-mall.com/darksidedigital/product.php?productid=20745&cat=0&page=1&featured

Look out for more of my books made available at Darkside Digital soon.

(2) The Antibacterial Pope reviews THOUGHT FORMS

Don’t ask me about the name of Nick Cato’s blog — I have no idea — but he’s done a review of my Dark Regions Press horror novel THOUGHT FORMS: http://nickcato.blogspot.com/2010/05/factory-factory-its-burning-its-burning.html

Nick says, “Paul works the graveyard shift in a factory that makes plastics. One night most of the staff seemingly vanishes and he’s left with a few co-workers who discover an amber glue-like substance has sealed all the windows and doors. Not able to break through, the small crew is then hunted by a supernatural creature that has the face of a young child and a creepy, elongated body with strength that defies its innocent face. And its THIS section of THOUGHT FORMS that provides the thrills…”

Nick wasn’t as excited about the novel’s other plotline, which he felt focused too much on its tormented romantic relationship, but that’s fair…and he does conclude, “Fan of the author will surely want to check this early-work out. Those not familiar with Thomas will easily see a work that reeks of forthcoming talent.” That’s reeks in a good way, mind you! And his reference to “early work” is because the novel was written back in the 80s, only appearing in print last year.

(3) The Thomas family dressed to kill!

Hm, what to share this time? How about my son Colin ready to go trick-or-treating a couple years ago (that’s him at age four on the wall behind him), wearing one of the T-shirts my brother Scott designed for Maine’s groovy Gravestone Artwear: http://www.gravestoneartwear.com/

While I’m plugging Scott and Gravestone Artwear, here are two of the designs Scott’s done for them, starting with the one Colin is wearing above. (Mind you, the resolution on these isn’t the greatest; the lines are crisper on the real thing.)

Next up, how about this shot of  my wife Hong in Japanese school girl mode, from 2007. This was what she was wearing when, as I reported in a blog post at that time, we were walking down the street to go to dinner and guys were yelling out of their cars (“That chick is hot — whooo!”). I should make you pay for this stuff.

And to round out my family, lastly is a photo of my daughter Jade…last October, when she was thinking about trick-or-treating, too! (Outfit courtesy of my sister Wendy.)

Jade looks like she’s thumbing for a ride…cuz it’s time to get outta here!

Punktown Hörstücke von Jeffrey Thomas!

(The first audio CD of Punktown short stories from Lausch)

(1) PUNKTOWN on YouTube

I’ve mentioned before that the German outfit Lausch has released three sets of audio versions of some of my Punktown short stories, in German-language translation, beautifully narrated and with super sound effects. (The first two sets being CDs, the third being strictly downloads – for a total of nine individual stories.) Well, I’ve just chanced upon the following very cool advert for them at YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFcTAjkF1qY

Very nice, very dramatic, yeah? I have the first two CDs but I’ve yet to hear the three stories from the last set – I’ve got to see what I can do to download them or have Lausch send them to me! And by the way, the story sample you hear is from “The Hate Machines,” from volume 2. I only know because of the artwork they briefly show in the clip, and because I hear the name of the main character — Cardiff. You didn’t think I can speak German myself, did you? That would be my brother Craig. And speaking of whom…

(Volume 2.)

(Volume 3.)

(2) More pictures from Boston, 2007

Last post I shared some pictures I took when my wife and I visited my brother Craig for the weekend, in 2007, and he toured us around Boston. Here are a few more shots. First up is a picture of me defending Hong from the local fauna outside the Boston Museum of Science:

You’ve seen the movie THE DEPARTED, filmed in Boston? Well in the movie, this building served as the headquarters of the Massachusetts State Police. (In reality though, the real State Police Headquarters isn’t as striking!)

And finally, just a pretty shot of a lot of boats in front of a lot of buildings:

Okay, then…until next time, as they say in Germany, Sayonara!

It’s WEIRD I never heard of this review before

(A photo taken by former Solaris editor Mark Newton, of DEADSTOCK in one of the UK's Waterstones book stores, when it was selected as the "Bookseller's Choice.")

(1) DEADSTOCK in WEIRD TALES

Funny that it should have only just a week ago come to my attention that my novel DEADSTOCK was reviewed in none other than WEIRD TALES magazine — their Sept.-Oct. 2007 issue. Better late than never, though. Curiously, reviewer Scott Connors focuses mostly on the novel’s mysterious businessman John Fukuda, and the two gangs that get trapped in the sinister Steward Gardens apartment complex — even on the strange being “Dai-oo-ika” — barely touching upon the main character, private eye Jeremy Stake. That’s fine, though, because there are definitely multiple plotlines running through the novel and I’m fond of all of them.

Connors says, “For Jeffrey Thomas, an entire city can become a haunted house.” I like that, and it’s exactly the idea I ran with in my earlier Punktown-based novel MONSTROCITY (which has a few slender connections to DEADSTOCK’s main plotline). Yesterday I picked up a fascinating new nonfiction book called ON MONSTERS, by Stephen T. Asma, which examines our love/hate relationship with all manner of monsters. In discussing the work of several of my heroes, David Lynch, Lovecraft and the animators the Brothers Quay, Asma observes, “I’ve been trying to suggest a more abstract concept of monstrous…The angst that Heidegger claimed to have no specific object (author’s italics) and the cosmic fear that Lovecraft tried to articulate seem to me to be obscure but palpable expressions of a dispersed, diffused monster.” This is exactly what I was after in MONSTROCITY — wherein the city itself is the true monster — but it’s also the omnious vibration that rumbles beneath much if not most of my Punktown fiction.

Connors liked the novel’s focus on familial relationships — John Fukuda with his daughter, wife and twin brother, and the two gangs with their own breed of family. He liked, too, that the lines begin to blur in regard to these families as the novel develops. It’s always interesting to see what aspect of a novel makes an impression on a reviewer. Just as long as it’s a good impression, as in this case!

So belated thanks, WEIRD TALES. And by the way, this was my first exposure to the new, radically reimagined WEIRD TALES (which might be better called NEW WEIRD TALES, but I like its new approach — it seems less stodgy). Well, as I said before, better late than never.

(2) More photos to share

I guess I’m still recovering from my computer crash. I find I can’t write any fiction right now, and I can barely bring myself to look at my email, so I know I’m still feeling the aftershocks. But my computer guy is coming next Monday to install a floppy drive (so I can access all those old floppies with my older stories, created back when I actually saved my work on something other than the hard drive), and today I loaded the contents of a bunch of photo CDs back into my document files. I haven’t yet loaded in the photos from my last trip to Vietnam, that I’d been sharing here for a few months. So I thought that, until I can continue doing so, I’d share a few of the other photos I looked at today. There are so many I’d like to share here in the future, actually. Anyway, here are a few tidbits…

Below is my son Colin, a few years ago when his super-nice teacher Amber took him to a Halloween party at his Junior High school. I did his makeup, and Colin won a prize for it! (He’s also wearing my Delirium Books t-shirt.)

My wife Hong is never shy about me sharing pictures of her here, so I’m not shy about it either. Back in 2007, a few months after I brought Hong to the US, my brother Craig — who lives in Quincy, MA —  invited us to stay with him for the weekend, and he toured us around Boston for several wonderful days. Here is Hong lost in my shirt and ready for bed at Craig’s place. (On the wall is a decorative hanging painted by Vietnamese poet/artist Duy Viet, which I bought for Craig in Vietnam, when I visited Duy Viet’s home.)

That weekend we took a tour on one of Boston’s famous “Duck Tour” duck boats, which navigate on land and in water. A lot of fun. Here’s one of them (they’re converted from old amphibious military vehicles), followed by some of the shots I took while we made our way through Boston’s “dirty water.”

Okay…more photos, and shameless self-promotion, next time around.

Eden Restored?

1. My Sanity Partly Recovered

…if I ever had it in the first place. Anyway, last time I related my woes at having my computer crash, with no updated back-up files from which I might restore several novels in progress. Well, later I realized I had created a set of back-up disks in July of 2008, so today my computer guy came here and restored nearly everything I had saved up to that point, at least (and that’s a huge at least!).  My SF novel in progress was completelty restored (since I hadn’t worked on it since that time), and that’s terrific, though the horror novel I began recently is beyond retrieval. Sigh. Well, I have to count my blessings. My guy alaso installed a floppy drive for me. I haven’t found a way to get into it yet (I’ll have to call him again tomorrow), but I’m feeling much better than I was. I thank everyone who expressed sympathy for my dilemma!

2. Avatar and Eden Log vs. Blue War and The Fall of Hades

Well, I bought AVATAR yesterday and finished watching it today. I must confess I now have a major crush on the character of Neytiri (though I’m not sure about our height difference), the “avatar” of the equally stunning Zoe Saldana. I must also confess that the movie got me sniffly at the end (“I see you.”). It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous feast for the eyes and I don’t really care too much that the storytelling brushstrokes are so broad (weren’t they in the first STAR WARS, before we got into the complexities of surprising familial relationships, and all the politics of the second trilogy?). I do have some criticisms, though. It’s rousing to see the Na’vi fight back against the human soldiers…but are all these soldiers evil, or just a bunch of poor grunts doing their job? You know, the way our hero Jake Sully once did? Giovanni Ribisi does a great job as a snickering, irreverent corporate baddie, though Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quaritch is no more human than the mechanical battle machine that forms his own avatar. That’s the writing, though, not Lang. This actor’s a chameleon; you’d hardly know he was the pudgy, obnoxious tabloid journalist who gets set aflame in MANHUNTER. By the way, I had the pleasure of seeing Lang in a theatrical production of WAIT UNTIL DARK that also starred Marisa Tomei and Quentin Tarantino (!) as the villain, Lang playing the sympathetic baddie that Richard Crenna played in the film.

I’ve gone on before about the uncanny similarities between my 2008 novel BLUE WAR and this film, so I won’t go into them again here (see my previous posts on AVATAR for that), but this was my first actual viewing and I found one more pretty amazing similarity. In AVATAR, when Neytiri first spies our hero Jake Sully she has him in her sights (with bow and arrow) and could kill him, but doesn’t. When my blue-skinned female warrior Thi Gonh first spies the protagonist of BLUE WAR, Jeremy Stake, she has him in her sights (with sniper rifle) and can kill him, but doesn’t. Hm! But again, it’s a bizarre coincidence, despite my jokes about Cameron ripping me off — this film was in production too long for that to have been the case, though my novel actually came out before the film did.

Here’s another example of this curious phenomenon. I’ve discovered a French SF film called EDEN LOG, which sounds weirdly similar to my forthcoming novel THE FALL OF HADES. People who have seen EDEN LOG may feel I borrowed from it should they later read my book, but I hadn’t become aware of the film until recently. Here’s a description of EDEN LOG: “When a man named Tolbiac awakens to find himself naked, disoriented and trapped somewhere deep underground, he begins an epic journey through a labyrinth of tunnels and dark caverns on his way toward the surface. Pursued by strange digital ghosts and other technological monsters, he uncovers clues to his predicament, which involves a scientific biosphere experiment gone awry.” Now here’s a description of my novel THE FALL OF HADES: “A young woman emerges from a catatonic state to find herself naked and devoid of memory, a centuries-long prisoner of an apocalyptic battle between formerly human avenging Angels, rebel bands of the Damned, and monstrous Demons of every description. With only a sentient, talking gun for a companion, she sets out to explore a radically transfigured Hell, her own surprising past, and the bulletproof fierceness of the human spirit. “ Hm! Both stories involve an ascent toward a new Eden through a cyberpunkish hell inhabited by dangerous mutants, among other adversaries. I haven’t seen EDEN LOG yet, but it’s at the top of my Netflix queue, so we shall see just how similar the two stories truly turn out to be. All coincidence, though. So if you don’t accuse me of ripping off this film, I’ll let Cameron off the hook for AVATAR.

3. The horror! The horror!

I’ve become Facebook friends with Canadian writer Ian Rogers, and so we’ve exchanged some examples of our published work. Among the chapbooks and magazines (including CEMETERY DANCE) that Ian’s appeared in is a chapbook called TUNDRA, which I’m doubly excited about because it also features a story by another Canadian author, Richard Gavin, who has recently become one of my favorite contemporary practitioners of the weird tale. I greatly look forward to reading Ian’s chapbook TEMPORARY MONSTERS (great title, great cover).

But something unpleasant caught my eye in that CEMETERY DANCE Ian sent me. It was an ad for a book called HORROR’S CLASSIC MASTERS: REMASTERED, edited by Kurt S. Michaels and published by Strider Nolan Media. The concept here is, take a bunch of famous horror tales like THE MONKEY’S PAW, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, and so on and “translate them into modern English,” as the ad puts it. These classics by Poe, M. R. James, H. G. Wells, Washington Irving, Bram Stoker and others have been rewritten so as to be “accessible” to today’s reader. To be fair, I haven’t read this book, and it isn’t at all like me to publicly diss another writer’s project, but this has to be the most appalling thing I have heard in a long time. Just stunningly horrible, to dumb down the work of some of the very best horror writers of history. Anyone who can’t stretch their mind sufficiently to take in these stories as their true authors intended them to be read doesn’t deserve to read them in any form. This is sheer arrogance, and it smacks of the parasitic lack of imagination behind all the remakes (STRAW DOGS is coming — argh!) poisoning Hollywood. Can’t these people create their own, original stories? Even if those stories turned out to be disappointing, I could never be more disgusted than I am by an endeavor like this. Sorry, but I would hope any true admirer of literature would — or should — feel the same. (And by the way, I wouldn’t include such books as PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES in this criticism, as those are being written as pastiches with an abudance of original, irreverent matter being transplanted into their mutated plots. Hell, I wouldn’t mind writing one of those myself.)