The Re-Purposing of House Improbabilia

I've been playing with the look of this blog, and right now, the site is rather bare bones. So for anyone who's been reading this thing, I appreciate your patience while I tinker with the layout.

I don't have a timeline in mind, but I'm hoping within the next few weeks, to have this blog in better shape. House Improbabilia will still be my "official" website where I can talk about my writing and other projects, but I'll also be moving more fully into the horror blogosphere, so you can expect more horror commentary and editorials.

I'm looking forward to it!

Strange Stories: Episode 7 - Just in Time

Download Strange Stories: Episode 7 - Just in Time here!

I was fortunate enough to be cast in Mike Murphy's Strange Stories audio drama. He appeared in Episode 7, in an episode called Just in Time, and the episode went live on July 4, 2010. (Listen to the show, and you might hear at least one other familiar voice as well!)

Check out Misfists Audio here - http://misfitsaudio.com/

Blog'D Classic - 09/22/05 - Looking in the Box

I used to maintain a LiveJournal and a different Blogger page called Blog'D; I also used to write for a geek culture website. This was a posting from 09/22/05.

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I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I keep going back, no matter how bad it gets, hoping, HOPING that my faith will be rewarded. It’s not like it’s always been like this. There was a time when I didn’t feel wasted and used afterward.

You know, before watching Hellraiser: Bloodline, that is.

I first saw Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II back-to-back in my teenage years, and even though my love of monster movies was firmly planted in my gray matter back in grade school, my exposure to and experience with the genre really didn’t involve much more than what I was able to pick up from library books and whatever I could sneak in via television (catching the face-tearing scene from Poltergeist on Showtime in the middle of a parent-less afternoon burned quite an image in my young mind). In high school, though, two things happened: 1) I was no longer hassled by “the man” about watching R-rated movies, and 2) I had my own wheels, which meant I could get to a movie theater or video store on my own power and schedule.

So one night, my friend Scott and I headed to the soon-to-be-absorbed-by-the-Blockbuster-empire local video store and picked up the first two Hellraiser flicks. Even though I was developing a fierce love of horror films, my friends weren’t into it as much as I was, which meant my friends humored me a lot of the time when it came to watching movies; part of breaking one of childhood’s taboos - watching an R-rated movie - made watching Hellraiser an easier pill to swallow for Scott, I’m guessing.

Even though I hadn’t really grasped the enormity of what I had seen, I was blown away by the movies. Even now, I can’t look back and adequately describe my feelings, but I can definitely say that my then view of horror movies was torn wide open by those two films.

It’s kind of sad the direction the sequels went, isn’t it?

I was a paying customer for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, and I remember that I was one of just a few customers in the movie theater. It was a little sad (the turn out) and, well, a little sad (the movie itself). In no way did it compare to the previous two films. Was it because it was too Americanized? (The first two installments had been decidedly British productions.) Was it because it was too studio-ized? (Is that even a word?) Clive Barker wasn’t as involved in its production; could that have been it? Whatever the reason, it just felt . . . lesser. The slasher-film motif is really not something that the Hellraiser franchise was built for, or around, and turning Pinhead (even though the audience knew Doug Bradley’s cenobite character by name by now, Hellraiser III was the first film in which he was actually CALLED Pinhead by another character in the film) into a slasher-type character just didn’t work. (Thankfully, Bradley was still able to infuse Pinhead with a bit of class and distinction. Some of the other cenobites, however, ended up delivering lines that would have been more at home in a Freddy Krueger flick.)

Despite it’s widely-reported studio interference and an eventual director credit given to Alan Smithee, I wanted to see Hellraiser: Bloodline theatrically, but I was visiting my grandparents in Arizona during the one weekend the movie played, and taking them along to Hellraiser really didn’t seem like a great idea, so I waited for the video release. I had heard and read about the problems with the production, but I was intrigued by some of the concepts teased in Fangoria magazine. (I think this was the first of the horror franchises to take the story to outer space - Jason X was years off, and John Carpenter hadn’t yet suggested jettisoning Michael Myers (an idea that was jettisoned itself, but that hasn’t stopped Carpenter from once talking of sending Snake Plissken to space in a potential third Escape From… movie). Leprechaun in Space was also a year away.)

The fourth Hellraiser wasn’t AWFUL, per se, but it definitely wasn’t great. A valid argument could be made stating that the first Hellraiser film was the best, and the quality slowly declines through parts 2, 3 and 4.

And definitely through to Part 5.

Hellraiser: Inferno was the first of the franchise to be treated to a straight-to-video release. It was also the first of the films to have at least felt like it started life as something decidedly non-Hellraiser. Of all the Hellraiser entries, Inferno seems the least invested in the mythos of the films. I can’t confirm that this is actual fact (like it is with Hellraiser: Deader), but Inferno’s script could have started life as a completely different movie that was morphed, forced and changed into a Hellraiser (much like the third Die Hard film started life as a non-John-McClane script called Simon Says that was molded into the Bruce Willis flick it eventually became).

Craig Sheffer gives a solid performance, but his character is so unlikable, it’s hard to really care about the lead’s fate, and by extension, the movie at all. The movie itself isn’t BAD, it just didn’t FEEL like a Hellraiser film. Doug Bradley’s near-absence (which is odd since one of the reasons the studio interfered with the Bloodline so much was the lack of Pinhead through most of the original script) led to Pinhead’s appearance at the end of the movie feeling pinned on.

The sixth installment, Hellraiser: Hellseeker was a bit better. It gave Pinhead a bit more screen time, and it did tap into the previous Hellraiser mythos a bit more. Sort of.

Ashley Laurence returns as Kirsty, sort of. She’s called Kirsty at one point, but no mention is made of what happened to her since the events of the earlier films, which is a bit odd since in the third film, we learn that she was locked up somewhere, mental-institution-style. Apparently, between 1992 and 2002, she got better, got married and ended up with a dirtbag husband. And even though Doug Bradley made mention of Pinhead and Kirsty having some “unfinished business” in various interviews and such, not much is made of this relationship or connection either.

In the end, though, this movie was MUCH better than Hellraiser: Deader. The movie makers haven’t even tried to hide that, as I suspect was the case of Hellraiser: Inferno, Deader started out as a non-Hellraiser film right off the bat. The script was acquired by the powers that be, then sent off to a new writer to be rewritten with the famed puzzle box making a few appearances and Pinhead showing up, mostly near the end. Eh. Boring film. Kari Wuhrer as the lead really was just an annoying journalist throughout the entire piece, and the story of her investigating a strange cult that kills themselves and then come back from death just drug on and on.

The best thing about this movie is the Easter Egg hidden on the DVD - make-up artist Gary Tunnicliffe (who’s been with the franchise since Hell on Earth), directed a fan film called No More Souls in which he himself plays Pinhead in a lonely, barren Hell. Humanity has succeeding in killing itself off, and Pinhead soliloquies about the absence of, well, anything to do. It’s a neat idea, and adequately executed. Makes one wonder what would happen if Tunnicliffe was given a chance to actually direct a Hellraiser feature himself.

Hellraiser: Hellworld was recently released on DVD, and while it’s definitely better than its immediate predecessor, I still found it lacking. The premise was interesting enough: Hellworld is an online role-playing game like ‘Everquest’ or ‘World of Warcraft,’ but is based firmly in the world of Hellraiser. That’s cool; I’d play that, even if the movie starts with the funeral of one of the game’s players who “took things too far.”

Man, Hellworld is just filled with missed opportunities. The movie’s tagline ‘Evil Goes Online’ just lends itself to some sort of web support, but there’s nothing. This is so indicative of these movies in recent years - make the movie, throw it to the market, hope for the best. I only knew of the existence of Hellworld because I read about it in Doug Bradley’s book Behind the Mask of the Horror Actor. No advertising. No pride.

Another missed opportunity? Lance Henriksen. Can you imagine him interacting with Doug Bradley? Yeah, apparently the filmmakers couldn’t either. With the exception of a, “Uh, uh, how do we wrap this up?” ending, these two genre actors share no screentime. (To his credit, Henriksen performs well, good and creepy, and homeboy’s lookin’ good and healthy. I seem to recall seeing him in something recently, and thinking to myself that he wasn’t aging well; I was glad to see otherwise.)

Hellworld was just . . . I can’t even tell you what I thought of it, but I really just don’t know. It was a horror movie, maybe even a Hellraiser movie, but in the end, it just . . . didn’t leave an impression.

I don’t know if there’s a ninth film in the works or not. I have mixed feelings about there even being one. Is it possible for a franchise to break back out of the straight-to-video market? Should Hellraiser even continue? Is it time to give up the box? Hell, the last three films were shot in Romania, so it’s not like their dropping a lot of money on the films now. We know Deader started out as a non-Hellraiser film; Inferno and Hellworld may as well have. Would it be too much to ask for someone to write a script, knowing IN ADVANCE that it’s going to feature elements like Pinhead, like the puzzle box? Clive Barker’s not been directly involved in the franchise for years now, so we can pretty much count him out in terms of breathing new life into the films (although he’s reportedly working on a new story featuring Harry D’Amour - from ‘The Last Illusion’/Lord of Illusions - and Pinhead).

Should the franchise be retired? I don’t think the audience has gone away. I mean, I’m still here, right?

I say, "Pinhead." You say, "Potato Head."

While looking at horror tribute videos the other day, I noticed that YouTube had an interesting suggestion when it comes Hellraiser and Pinhead.

My favorite Universal horror video tribute

I love that there are so many tribute videos on YouTube, and this one - Horror is Universal - is one of my favorites.

I love the music choice, I thought the editing was well done and the use of the flashes between scenes as well as to highlight points in the music was well executed. Other elements I enjoy: Doctor Pretorius gets some attention, the Gillman is integrated seamlessly into the "classic Universal Monster" pantheon and we get a bit of Herbert Lom as the Phantom of the Opera.

Still Quest-ing

Over at Professor Bleak's Late Late Monster Show, the Professor reflected on buying his own VHS copy of Dario Argento's Suspiria in the early 90s. Back then, most movies were not priced to be sold to the home market. VHS tapes were being sold to video rental companies, and prices of $99.99 per VHS tape weren't uncommon. Personally, I owned a few movies on VHS in high school, buying the movies that I really loved back then (for some reason or other, the only ones that are coming to mind are Excalibur and Conan the Barbarian, but I'm sure there were some horror titles in my old VHS collection back in the day), picking up what I could either used from the local video stores or whatever Musicland had on their shelves. (I would later end up working for the local Blockbuster Video as well as the local Sundance knock-off Reel Collections - simultaneously for a little while - and ended up practically working for movies, blowing more of my paycheck than I should have on VHS tapes instead of, oh, I don't know, paying my rent on time.)

I never went as far as Professor Bleak, saving up $99.99 to buy a copy of Suspiria. However, I did have similar experiences to those he describes, scrubbing through all the local video stores trying to find the movies that I only knew about because I saw them mentioned in the pages of Fangoria, Gorezone, Cinefantastique or Starlog.

Even though my parents didn't let me watch R-rated movies as a kid, I had a pretty good idea as to what the big horror franchises were in the 80s. We made weekly family trips to the local Video USA, and would pick up movies to watch over the weekend. When my parents weren't looking, I would read the back of the Nightmare on Elm Streets, the Hellraisers and all the rest. (It was at a place that sold waterbeds and rented videos where I read the backs of the Friday the 13ths while my parents were filling out the paperwork to buy something or other and at that point, I promised myself that someday, when I was old enough to rent the movies on my own, I would sit down and watch all the Friday the 13th films in one massive marathon. Now that I think about it, I still haven't indulged myself in that marathon.)

When I was able to start renting horror movies, I went a little crazy. I tracked down every title I remembered sneaking glances at, which was difficult because that waterbed/video store wasn't around anymore, but we still had plenty of small video shops in Cheyenne, WY. I hit them all, and eventually starting working for one of them (it started life as a Giant Video, but eventually Blockbuster acquired it).

Some video shops didn't have the greatest selection - I used to kid that a video store's worth could be judged by how many installments of the Friday the 13th films could be found on its shelves. Even while working for Blockbuster, where I could get free rentals, I would go to the small store down the street or the place on the other side of the bridge or the one that repaired vacuum cleaners because not one store carried everything that I wanted to see. I remember tracking down the unrated cut of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth to one wood paneled video store, bringing it home, popping into the VCR, seeing the ad for a special documentary about Clive Barker which was only available if you mailed in the receipt from the rental shop, noting that THAT DAY was the last day this offer was running, racing back to the video store, checking in the movie and then re-renting it so I could get another receipt because I had thrown the first one away somewhere between the video store and my apartment. (And I wasn't even all that put out that I had to pay for the movie again!)

I learned a few things during my time at Blockbuster; I became one of the people whose job it was to repair broken videocasettes. (This particular Blockbuster location took very seriously making sure the tapes were always repaired when possible, especially in the case of the Disney releases, instead of removing them from inventory and MAYBE replacing them, if it was even possible to do so.) This was something I remembered years later when I rented some horror movie somewhere in Bozeman, MT, that broke while it was in my possession BEFORE I had watched it. I don't remember the title, but it was something I knew none of the other video stores had, so to watch it, I had to fix it first.

Today, we've got mostly-reasonably priced DVDs and Blu-ray discs. We've got Netflix. For the most part, most horror fans today can get their hands on pretty much whatever horror movie they want. And that's AWESOME. I could finally put together that Friday the 13th marathon with little hassle and headache (save for finding the time to do such a thing).

But I still struggle because there are still movies out there that I want to see that I can't seem to find as easily as I'd like.

One of the many, MANY ways Brenda made life better for me was by adding a Region-Free DVD player to our collection of electronics resting comfortably beneath our TV. For whatever reason, some movies just don't get released here in the states, or if they are released, it's months or even years after other parts of the world have seen them. The Zombie Diaries was released in the UK before Uncle Romero started rolling on his Diary of the Dead, and because I stumbled across this title on a website somewhere, I knew about it, sought it out, let Amazon.co.uk handle some dollars-to-pounds conversion and had the film delivered. 2007's Wasting Away was screened at the Zompire Film Festival, but it still didn't have a state-side release, so if I want it, I'm going back to Europe's Amazon.co.uk. (Wasting Away will be released here in the states under the title Ah! Zombies!! soon.) The same can be said of Apocalypse of the Dead (originally titled Zone of the Dead).

I know I'm being zombie-centric (and can you blame me), but there are other genre titles - 2006's All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, for example - that have become the gems that can give those who are pursuing them that same anticipation, that same thrill, that same rush that Professor Bleak is describing.

I just sent €20 to a filmmaker in Europe. I didn't know where to go to get a euro note; I assumed any bank would do it, but my work hours don't allow for a lot of wandering from bank to bank, asking for European currency. I found a place online that would handle the exchange, but I wasn't willing to spend the $10-$30 on shipping. I eventually found someone who had one in person, made the exchange, and I tucked it into a birthday card and off it went.

I did this to get my hands on a movie I first read about on Wikipedia.

I don't know if this is quite the same as hopping from video store to video store, looking for a copy of the latest Hellraiser or (god help me) The Howling, but it's not like having a subscription to Netflix is making it easy for me to get my hands on this movie.

Or on Six Bullets.

As a collector of film scores, I stumbled across Endless Blue's score from this short film a few years ago and snatched it up. That was a few years ago, and I still listen to it fairly often. I'd LOVE to see the movie itself (there are bits of dialogue from the movie sprinkled throughout the album, which makes the fact that I haven't seen the film yet even worse!), and I've been watching Six Bullets' website (http://www.sixbulletsmovie.com/), but it hasn't been updated since 2007. I've swapped some emails recently with someone involved in the production who said they'd send me a copy, but I haven't heard back from him after I gave him my mailing address.

There are obviously resources online - some legal, some not so much - where I can find movies that haven't received a digital release of any kind. I keep my eyes out for some of the more obscure titles, foreign films, extremely limited releases, etc., and I always find myself experiencing a little rush when I find something rare, hard-to-find or even near-lost.

A few years ago, a friend told me about a movie called Siege of the Dead. It was an amateur production (directed by Chris Kaylor), it was a zombie movie . . . it was something I wanted to see. A few emails to those involved in the production led to dead ends, but then the friend who originally told me about the movie made the movie available to me.

Is it an amazing piece of movie-making? No. But is it something I enjoyed? Certainly. I'm sure part of my enjoyment comes from some maybe even sick place of knowing that this movie is somehow rare, but even taking that out of the equation, I think it holds up. (It holds up enough for me to cover it on Mail Order Zombie sometime later this year.)

Back to the original point of this blog - I think there's still that element of the quest when it comes to finding horror movies . . . if you want there to be. We just have to try a bit harder and look in places we wouldn't normally look. There's something about seeking out something like, say, Dead Bones, Olivier Beguin's short horror Western, watching it, talking about it with your friends (and maybe even eventually reviewing it on your podcast) that gives me a little charge. I'm not showing off that I found this movie that no one in town is going to find unless they go to the same website I went to, jumped through the same hoops and so on; rather, in a weird, twisted way, I feel like some sort of archaeologist digging for the obscure, the lost, the forgotten horror gems, consuming them and doing my oh-so-small part in making sure that the filmmakers' mother isn't the only person on the planet that remembers any given horror movie.

And it's fun. Digging, Googling, Friend-ing people on Facebook, sending out blind emails, and maybe even making a few phone calls - it somehow justifies the amount of time I spend into front of this computer . . . to me, anyway.

Blog'D Classic - 04/11/07

I used to maintain a LiveJournal and a different Blogger page called Blog'D. This was a posting from 04/11/07.

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Riding in the Elevator isn't Normally this Odd . . .
. . . but this afternoon, as I was heading back up from picking up some lunch, there were two . . . I don't know if they were maintenance men or what, but they weren't people I'm used to seeing around the workplace (of course, I'm on a different getting-up-way-too-early-in-the-morning schedule this week for some training). They were both wearing caps, one of them was carrying a ladder. I stepped into the elevator with my iPod plugged into my ears, listening to a podcast (I think it was Monster Squad Terrorcast), but over the voices in my ears, I could hear these two men talking to each other.

Man with Ladder: Is that necro . . . necrophilia?

Man without Ladder: No, no, no. That's with dead bodies.

Me: (not saying a damned word)

Man with Ladder: Really? Necrophilia?

Man without Ladder: Yeah.

Man with Ladder: So what is it when they choke you?

Me: (pretending my iPod is playing so loud I can't hear them)

Man without Ladder: That's not necrophilia.

Man with Ladder (placing his free hand around his own neck): Then what is it when they choke you?

The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out without contributing to the conversation, thank you very much.

Why MOZ?

I've long been the kind of person who, when he enjoys, and I mean really enjoys something, he doesn't want to just be a consumer, but a contributor and creator. I've been like that with horror fiction. I've been like that with movies. Rap music. Comic books. Role-playing games.^*

The bottom line is that there are a lot of things I enjoy so much that I've found a way to somehow get involved in them; that's how it was with podcasting.

I spoke a little bit about this when Bren and I appeared on The Podcast Podcast, and may have even touched on it a few years ago at HorrorCommentary.com; I fell in love with horror podcasting before launching Mail Order Zombie. I was listening to Deadpit.com (don't call them a podcast!), and used to joke that my weekend didn't start until I got home from work Friday night and listened to their latest episode, and then if there was time before Bren got home from work herself, I'd check out Rue Morgue Radio afterward. Later, I drifted to Night of the Living Podcast, discovered Dread Media and the Dead Lantern Splattercast, and listened to shows that have long since podfaded.

And I decided I thought podcasting looked, or sounded, like so much fun that I wanted to give it a go myself. At first, I wanted to put a crew together, but wasn't able to find the folks that would be willing to commit to a weekly recording schedule. Additionally, I was worried about mkaing sure my podcast identity was unique enough. There were a number of horror podcasts popping up all over the 'net, and ultimately I really wanted to focus on an aspect of horror that I REALLY loved, which is why I came to zombie movies as my topic.

Now I knew there was another zombie movie podcast out there. I was listening to The Midnight Podcast, but I decided to move forward on creating my own zombie podcast anyway for two reasons: 1) my show was originally designed to focus more on the straight-to-DVD zombie movie sub-sub-sub-genre (movies you would only be able to see through outlets like Netflix, hence the "mail order" of Mail Order Zombie), and 2) I've long believed that "there's always room for one more good one," and I hoped that I would be "good" enough to find a little place to exist in the podcast community.

Obviously, the show's evolved since its launch. Our focus is a lot more broad, and, yes, notice I said our focus, in that there's more than just me. Bren's a full-on co-host, and I'm honored to have her rocking the mic with me every week. Additionally, the MOZ Family has grown to include regular contributors like Scott M., O'Day, Dr. J, Tony, Scott C. and even a zombie named Wayne. And the listeners? Man, I'm SO thankful that so many people support the show just by listening to it.

I'm still having a blast with Mail Order Zombie, and I don't see it stopping any time soon. As the show has evolved over the past near-two-and-a-half years, it will continue to change as we move into the future.

I'm rambling a bit and have gone a bit off-topic. Why did I launch a zombie movie podcast? Because I love zombie movies and I love podcasts. And why do I continue to produce a zombie media podcast? Because I still love zombie media and I still love podcasting. I should really learn to self-edit a bit more; I wouldn't have wasted nearly as much of your time otherise.

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^*Role-playing games - I didn't make it much further than reviewing and editing some small press third-party d20 products. It was fun, but as I drifted away from table-top gaming (lack of time, lack of a gaming group, etc.), my creative energies went elsewhere.

Comic books - I got involved with a group putting together an ongoing anthology book. I was fortunate enough to be teamed with an artist (since I can't manage drawing as well as I'd like), and my story was set to run in issues #3-#6. The book folded after issue #2.

Rap music - I sometimes talk about it like it was a bigger deal than it really was, but in the mid-90s, my friend Mike and I formed a rap group in the middle of Montana. We called ourselves So Damn White, and appeared on the local college radio station a few times, as well as a handful of times at a few bars in either Bozeman or Livingston. Oh, and there was one dorm party when Brenda and I started dating.

Movies - In grade school, I wrote scripts for movies starring my GI Joe figures which I planned to film stop-motion style with an old home movie camera. In junior high, a friend suggested we make a movie with a video camera for a class project, and throughout high school and community college, I was producing no-budget and student movies. Eventually, I won an award for one short zombie movie, and then later had a movie shown as part of the 2003 HP Lovecraft Film Festival. It was a lot of fun, and while I haven't seriously pursued making anything since '03, someday, I'm sure I'll get back to it.

Horror fiction - I've been writing off-and-on since at fourth grade, and scary stories just appealed to me even back then. As I've gotten older, my tastes have matured, but I've never left the dark behind (which is appropriate considering the recent release of Dark: A Horror Anthology which features not one, but two Derek M. Koch short stories).

Focus?

It's June 1st, start of a new month, not quite halfway into 2010, and I think I need to do something different with my blog.

I already mentioned this a bit here; I've been struggling with what to post. I didn't want to just, for lack of a better term, "blog" but I also don't really have the time or energy to make House Improbabilia something more review-specific as I put most of that enthusiasm into Mail Order Zombie, so I may just feel my way around as I move forward with this site . . .

But I'm not going to get around from Mail Order Zombie-business completely. Coming later this week/weekend? Just WHY exactly did I launch Mail Order Zombie?

What do you want to see here?

I don't post enough here.

I don't want this blog to take away time from writing or podcast production, but I feel like there needs to be more than 1-or-2 posts a month if I expect anyone to read this thing. Originally, my intention was to use this space to talk about my writing process, and I'd like to keep Improbabilia.com more focused on this area of my life/art/creative endeavors, but I find talking about my writing to be a little masturbatory.

So, you . . . you few who actually read this . . . what would YOU want to see here?

My short story "The Law" in "Dark: A Horror Anthology"

Y'all have already seen this, right?

Dark: A Horror Anthology is my first print publication. Some of my short stories have appeared online, and there's my former columns at Paperback Reader and other websites, but Dark represents the first time anyone can go to Amazon.com and search by name to find an honest-to-goodness book.

Of course, if you WERE to purchase the book through Amazon, I'd like to ask that you use the link at the Mail Order Zombie Marketplace as this helps support Mail Order Zombie, too!

Goal/blog check-in

We're about four-and-a-half months into 2010, and I wanted to 1) come up with something new to post here at House Improbabilia, and 2) check in on my goals that I posted back in January. While checking in, I may need to tweak some of these goals or maybe even make some more drastic edits.

Goal One - Maintain my bi-monthly column at Paperback Reader.
I really enjoyed writing for Paperback Reader, and my Papercut column still had some steam. However, without going into too many details, I've stopped producing the column over there. I'd like to thank the editor Bart Gerardi for running both Papercut and my previous column Derek's Open Letter over the years. I learned some valuable lessons about myself as a writer during my time at Paperback Reader, and I hope to continue to grow as a regular horror writer of some sort elsewhere in the future.

Goal Two - Non-fiction book project Number One.
I'm in talks with an artist who may come on board this project as, at the very least, the art deisgner of the cover. The text is nearly 75% complete, and I'm working to have something to show in the next few months (hopefully sooner!)

Goal Three - 2010 Novel Number One.
Goal Four - 2010 Novel Number Two.
For the past couple months, these two novels have been jockeying back and forth, each one trying to take center stage. I've decided which one is going to get the most attention and I still anticipate this one being completed by year's end. Novel Number Two? I scratch down a few notes when something comes to mind, and I'll let it brew for a little bit longer while I work on Novel Number One.

Goal Five - Non-fiction book project Number Two.
I'm riding the accelerator pedal on this one - there are stretches during which I make some headway on this, and then there are stretches during which I'm working on something else. I need to see Non-fiction book project Number One finished first, I think.

Goal Six - As much short fiction writing as I can.
Still on the plate.

Goal Seven - Not quite a fiction or non-fiction project, but there's still some writing involved, so there you go.
Goal Seven needs to be shelved for the time being.

"Loose Thoughts on a Light Rail"

This blog is supposed to be dedicated to my writing process, my writing progress, my writing success, etc.-ess, but I've not posted much in terms of actual writing. Let's change that.

In 2008, the online publication The Harrow: Original Works of Fantasy and Horror published my short story "Loose Thoughts on a Light Rail" in Volume 11, Number 5. You can find it at their website right . . . here.

Cannot live on zombie movies alone?

So far, this blog has been less about my actual writing projects and more about the behind-the-scenes decision-making and questioning about my writing projects, and this post isn't going to be any different.

Man cannot live on zombie movies alone. I know . . . I know . . . Strange thing for the producer of Mail Order Zombie to say, eh?

Here's the thing - I've got a handful of other "geek loves." Non-zombie horror movies. Star Trek. Indiana Jones. Robert E. Howard. Lovecraft. Comic books. I'm a little all over the map when it comes to some of this stuff.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that . . . far from it. Sure, sometimes it's hard to blend Captain Kirk with Captain Rhodes, but I keep it all fairly compartmentalized in my head.

Where it does start to become a stumbling block is when start putting pen to paper.

I'm not a known commodity. I don't have a well-known brand. So is it wise to throw something like a dark fantasy story into the mix while working toward building a horror/zombie brand? A superhero story (of all things)? At what point is it okay to diversify my output?

I don't have an answer to that. Do you?

Trying to run with the distractions

I've come to expect a certain . . . pattern when it comes to my creative endeavors. Over the years, I've never quite learned how best to avoid this pattern; I've just learned to expect it to rear its ugly distracting head when I feel like I've got a groove going on one or two projects already.

I get distracted with other potential projects.

I've been lucky with Mail Order Zombie. I've been able to keep producing the podcast on a weekly basis for over two years, and even if I have been hit with other project ideas, there's still always a new MOZ every week. There are other podcast ideas that have come and gone since I first dipped my toes in the podosphere, and I even put out one singular episode of something I called Mixtape of the Macabre (which will sadly end up being one of those podcasts that never makes it past the first episode, methinks); I spun MOZ Presents: The Munchies off from Mail Order Zombie, and this has let me branch out a little bit, but new Munchies episodes have been few and far between.

Normally what happens is this: I make some headway on some sort of creative project (more often than not, it's a piece of writing), and then something else will pop up. Eventually, I end up with three, four, five different projects going at once, and I burn out before anything's actually completed. I used to tell myself that it was a good thing that I was "so creative" (yes, I realize how that sounds!), but after a while, I end up finding more frustration that completion. I suppose it's a matter of discipline.

And it worries me that it's happening again.

I've been listening to a lot of audio drama podcasts lately, and damn if I haven't been thinking about what it might be like to produce one of my own. How in the hell is THAT supposed to fit into my 2010 goals? How do I make the time to do something like this where there are still nights when I stay up WAY past my bedtime producing Mail Order Zombie? (Thankfully not as many, but still . . . )

I've got a few ideas, and I think within the next few weeks, I'll be revisiting my 2010 goals and maybe rewriting them. Hey, editing is part of the writing process, right?

Progress Check

I haven't updated here as much as I would have liked, but I HAVE been making progress on the various writing projects I mentioned in the last entry here at House Improbabilia.

• Goal One - My Paperback Reader is still rolling, and it's still fun!
• Goal Two - I'm a little behind whatever schedule I was hoping for, but it's still coming, and it's still coming along strong.

Again, a bit vague, right? Trust me, I think y'all would rather I spend more time writing my actual writing projects than a blog post, right?

I like that, Heather - goals, not resolutions

A good friend of mine - Heather over at Out of the Green - posted earlier this year that she's not making any New Year's resolutions. Rather, she's setting goals, and her reasoning made a lot of sense to me, so I'm following suit, and setting goals for 2010.

Some of my goals are personal (dealing with health and finances, for example), and some of them (the ones I'm sharing here) are more writer-ly.

• Goal One - Maintain my bi-monthly column at Paperback Reader. This should be easy and a no-brainer; my "Papercut" column is part editorial, part critique, and I've got plenty of thoughts about the horror genre that I can put to virtual paper.
  
• Goal Two - Non-fiction book project Number One. Yeah, yeah, I'm being purposefully vague here, and I will disclose more as I get closer to seeing this one completed . . . which, if I can keep my head down and nose to the grindstone (and that's the very last time that I, as a writer, will use that clichéd phrase), I can see being completed in three months time.
  
• Goal Three - 2010 Novel Number One. I'm working through an old National Novel Writing Month novel I completed in 2006, expanding the text, changing the perspective and fleshing out the characters a bit more. I've started work on this already, and would like to see a finished draft by summer.
  
• Goal Four - 2010 Novel Number Two. This novel features a character that will appear in my contribution to the upcoming anthology Dark, scheduled to be released later this year. I'm as excited about this one as I am about 2010 Novel Number One, and look forward to learning a bit more about this great city in which I live(-ish - technically I don't live in Portland, OR, proper) as I hope to tie some of this novel into the history and geography of the Portland, OR, area. The goal for this is to see a first draft completed by the end of 2010.
  
• Goal Five - Non-fiction book project Number Two. This is a big one, with a lot of work to do and headway to make. I'm looking forward to tackling this as it's been bubbling around in my brain for at least a year now, and it's about damned time I throw those words down. More details as this project becomes more concrete.
  
• Goal Six - As much short fiction writing as I can. There are some markets that have asked to see some of my work, and I can't let them down! Besides, I can always go back to a short story to keep the writing gears turning if any of my novel or non-fiction projects give me any grief.
  
• Goal Seven - Not quite a fiction or non-fiction project, but there's still some writing involved, so there you go. I meant to complete this project in 2009, and I need to touch base with the collaborator with whom I was working, but I think this will be a fun project to get off the ground and shop around.
  

Wow. That seems like a lot, huh? I should probably got off of this blog and get to work . . .