Monday, September 14, 2020

Isolation: Day 185

Music:

Wow. This just blew me right the F&*K away. This year's Underneath is already on the shortlist to be on my top ten albums of 2020, this perfect cover of Alice in Chains' immortal 'Down in a Hole' may just put the newly released Under the Skin live album on that list, as well. 

This is one of those songs I can't hear without a slew of emotions, thoughts, and sensations from high school coming flooding back. That kind of emotion juxtaposition usually doesn't translate to covers. That is definitely not the case with this one. 




Read:

Two stories from finishing Nathan Ballingrud's debut short story collection, North American Lake Monsters, I jumped into Stephen Graham Jones' Night of the Mannequins. I read the thing in a few hours and absolutely loved it. Funny, freaky, weird, hilarious, spooky, confounding. All of the above. This is a slasher novel that is not anywhere close to being what you would ever expect from a slasher story. Highest possible recommendation, especially since you can probably knock it out in a day. Perfect summer reading. 


Night of the Mannequins is $3.99 on Kindle right now, and worth every goddamn penny!

Next, as I savor these last few stories in Lake Monsters, I'm probably going to start a long-overdue re-read of Clive Barker's iconic The Hellbound Heart.



Playlist:

Doves - The Universal Want
Earth - Primitive and Deadly
X - Los Angeles
Steely Dan - Aja
Mudhoney - March to Fuzz
Electric Wizard - Black Masses
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone



CARD:


Getting back up on my writing legs after a fairly successful weekend that proved my new outline method will make writing these next two Shadow Play books considerably easier than the first.

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