The Endless Trailer (No, not Sandman related)

Been meaning to post this for a while. Looks intriguing.

My First Book Has Been Published!

My first book, an anthology of seven short horror stories, has been published! Purchase link below the cover image.

Link: A Collection of Desires
Description from the back cover:

"7 Tales of Modern Horror: A movie that kills and the app that lures its victims. The Angel of Terror bound to a suburban apartment building. Online dating! Snake worshipping murder fetishists and a kill-happy couple out to take revenge on their landlord! A Collection of Desires traffics in the horrors of the modern world; horrors that walk beside us by day, and creep inside our dreams every night."

2018: May 7th 10:00 AM

Hide is a band from my home town of Chicago that I discovered last night via Dais Records mailing list. I'm just beginning to delve into their work, but I find they scratch the itch left by bands like Throbbing Gristle, Excepter and, perhaps to a lesser extent but still in the ballpark, Skinny Puppy.

After people recommending it for years and me being a pig-headed hold-out, I've finally finished reading Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's The Long Halloween. Gave it 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads; sometimes I dumb.

(The reason I've long held out on reading The Long Halloween is everything I've ever read by Loeb - and granted all of it was well after this and Hush were written - was terrible. Not mincing words, and if you think I am, you try and make it through Ultimates, vol. 3. Go ahead, I dare you).

Oh! Finished Netflix's Dark last night. Holy mother of god, what an ending!!! Now, I need to construct my Dark murderboard so we can re-watch it and I can actually tell the characters apart.

Playlist from yesterday:

Converge - The Dusk in Us
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Alkaline Trio - Crimson
Bella Morte - Where Shadow Lie
Hide - Castration Anxiety

Card for the day:

The Earthy aspect of Water. From the Grimoire: "Dreams can become reality. Pay attention to your dreams. Focus thought through them, she can help you follow your intuition."

2018: May 5th 5:34 PM

Well, here's some fookin' Pogues because I met Garth Ennis today and he did a bumper for Drinking w/ Comics. Footage to appear sometime in the near future.



I'm not really one for autographs. In fact, one thing life has taught me, through my experience and those of others, is to avoid meeting anyone you are a fan of at all costs. Not entirely true, but a good rule of thumb. That said, there are a handful of writers/creators I just cannot pass up the chance to shake hands with and, in some cases, ask for an autograph. David Lynch was one, and my friend Lita Weisman helped make that dream come true at the release of his book Catching the Big Fish. Fast forward a number of years and I was able to meet Stray Bullets creator David Lapham. It's hard to overestimate the influence Stray Bullets has had on me, and I had Mr. Lapham sign a copy of the original issue #1, along with Young Liars #07, possibly my favorite comic book cover art EVER:

And today came Garth Ennis. Awesome Comic Shop 4 Color Fantasies in Rancho Cucamonga had an unbelievable deal for Free Comic Book Day, where for the paltry cost of $30, you could jump all the FCBD lines, get three items signed by Mr. Ennis, and you received a copy of either the first trade of Preacher - got it and the original issues to boot - or Punisher: Platoon, which I'd never read. Signing wise, I had a pretty hard time deciding what three items from the collection I would ask Mr. Ennis to put his Nom de Plume on, but I ended up going with three mid-90s heavies and the first three things I read by the man:

Playlist from yesterday:

Alice in Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
Chelsea Wolfe - Spun
The Raveonettes - 2016 Atomized
Monolord - Vaenir
Kings of Leon - Because of the Times

Also, although I haven't been in the habit of listening to podcasts for a while now, I'm drifting back into it a bit. I spent a good deal of time over the previous two days listening to Blumhouse's Shockwaves Podcast, which I can't recommend enough for horror fans. I jumped right in with 2017's Halloween episode, where Waxwork Records' founder, co-owner Kevin Bergeron and composer Douglas Pipes were guests. Really great podcast.

No card today.

2018: May 4th - New Alice in Chains!

How weird that the first time I dig out 2013's The Devil Put Dinosaurs here in a couple years and then write about it, is the same day that Alice in Chains drop a teaser of their newest song, presumably off an album not yet announced. And it's pretty good, too, this new track. Looking forward to seeing an album later in the year.

The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying went up yesterday, you can read it HERE.

Playlist from yesterday:

Alice in Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was... Liber III E.P.
Brand New - Daisy
Brand New - Science Fiction
Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist
Thou - The House Primordial
Deafheaven - Honeycomb
Deafheaven - Sunbather
Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Card for the day:

Ah! My favorite card. Probably because I made serious progress in re-formating my writing ritual yesterday and thus, was able to accomplish quite a bit.

2018: May 3rd 6:28 AM

It is my opinion that Alice in Chains never had a bad album until The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. Now, I like pretty much all the songs on this record, however, I find it difficult to listen to as an album, top to bottom. Maybe their time has run out, however the absolute Shock of finding that I really dug When Black Gives Way To Blue earned them a lot of respect in my eyes. In high school, pre-grunge, Anthrax was my band. After the influx of new material with the post-Nirvana wave, Alice was. Dirt made an ENORMOUS impression on me; I mean, there is no way to overestimate the effect that record had on me. And pretty much still does, although time and life experience has obviously diluted that experience. When Layne Staley died I felt what people felt when Cobain did. I followed Jerry Cantrell's two solo records and liked them to varying degrees, but something was, obviously, missing. A lot of time passed and then James Duval came in to the picture and I felt divided; I figured Cantrell was at least 50% of the band to begin with (at least), and his name did not have the 'branding' that AlC did, so why begrudge the guy? The test came down to the music, and I have to say, I dug Blue a lot. It's never been in regular rotation, but then again most Alice binges are sporadic events at this point and they usually center around the original albums. Recently I dug Dinosaurs back out and listened to it and found I really like it. The title track is especially haunting musically, and here's a video I'd never knew existed! The one thing that diminishes the track for me just a skosh is the slightly awkward rhyming couplet in the chorus, with "Jesus don't like a queer" working but only just - 'like' seems like a weak verb there. But that's nitpicking, which is okay when something is this good.

Playlist from 5/02:

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
The Raveonettes - Ghost single
The Raveonettes - 2016 Atomized
Alice in Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here

Card of the day:

What is it with this card? Actually, now I know what all the recurrences of this one were warning me about - I'm not putting it down here, but suffice it to say it's something I have to solve and when I do, I will have a tiny influx of $$$.

2018: May 2nd 6:32 AM

So, obviously the consistency on these posts has begun to suffer a bit. My output here is still great, in my own obnoxious opinion, but it has wavered. This doesn't mean I'm losing gumption, or the new idea that held me in its thrall has gotten old, it just means shit has been hectic. So first, something a little less hectic:



Sign O' The Times is probably my favorite album by Prince, and one that holds me perpetually in its thrall; just hearing the opening notes of The Ballad of Dorothy Parker, with its odd, wobbly sustained keyboard note in the background and overly gated beat means I'll be immediately strapping this one in on the iPod at work in a few. From opening title track to the sexual juxtaposition of the two closers (Hot Thing is a one-night-stand sex romp, followed immediately by Forever in my Life which is something of an ode to settling down), Sign O' The Times IS 1987 to me, start to finish, in tone, themes and presentation, even if I probably only heard the title track at the time. Goes to show how every on the radio after its release was probably taking from it.

Anyway, I don't know if things have been more hectic or I'm just more scattered - well, #2 is definitely true - but I haven't been able to get a lot of work done on the T12 project. It's been a parade of responsibilities at work, even though I often don't feel like I'm doing much and the days are dragging, something that usually never happens to me. Friends say I'm just suffering from starting over in a new place, all my old protocols and procedures suddenly out the window. That must be it.

Playlist from yesterday:

The Ocean - Anthropocentric
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Prince & 3RDEYEGIRL - PLECTRUMELECTRUM
Boy Harsher - Country Girl E.P.
Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
Black Queen - Fever Daydream
Kings of Leon - Only By The Night

Card for the day:

And there you go. I just interpreted this card as the ruins of an old paradigm for my good friend Missi yesterday - she also does a daily pull - and just like that, I'm taking a few paragraphs ago about the growing pains of an all-new situation and I pull the Ten of Swords to further emphasize that, yeah, rebuild dude.