Stephen King: The Man's Got Tremendous Heart

Doctor Sleep is further proof that Stephen King is one of this generation's (or any generation's, for that matter) most cherished storytellers. 

The novel is filled with touching insights into the frailty of the flawed--a population of humans that, thankfully, encapsulates all of us. It tells the story of Abra Stone and Danny Torrance, and I'm not writing those names out of order. If it weren't for Abra's tremendous gifts, the True Knot would still be out there on I-4, clogging the left lane and stopping at every rest stop to sniff out some steam snacks.

King's observational gifts are highly tuned here, and he masters the greatest trick of the seasoned surrealist--to render the familiar distant, strange, or menacing. The short passage in which he describes the Knot--they're denizens, characteristics, behaviors, and appearance--is chilling. The idea of ancient evil masked in such benign clothing is well done, and Rose the Hat is one of my all-time favorite villains. 

King knows what it's like to have been, if not derailed by addiction, at least a little bit waylaid by it. His coverage of Danny's recovery, his constant struggles with his illness, and his final redemption are authentic without ever becoming patronizing. There's a lot of realism here, and it just shows how large the author's heart is. 

All writing is deeply personal, but much of it never leans toward revelatory. Doctor Sleep does, even if it's not King's rock-bottom moment that's on display here. This is a book for anyone that's been kicked around a bit (and not necessarily by addiction, but by any number of life's conundrums), but found the strength to stand and do something important.

As Casey K. will no doubt attest, sometimes that "something important" is just getting through another day.

Another fantastic story. Can't wait to see what's coming up next...

Kind Words on The Silver Coast and Other Stories

The greatest compliment I can pay a writer is that his or her work gets me excited to hit the word processor each day, so it was a huge thrill to read this review of my forthcoming collection, The Silver Coast and Other Stories.


Thank you, Meaghan, for taking a look at the collection. I'm glad you enjoyed the stories!


(It's a special circumstance for me as well, because my family is from Baltimore. My aunt still lives there, and my folks both graduated from Bel Air High School. And the Orioles are in first place!)

News on "Raising Tom Chambers"

My story "Raising Tom Chambers" was listed as a notable story with the Million Writers Awards. Thanks very much to G.E. Mullins for the nomination, and to Jason Sanford for facilitating the exposure for stories published on the internet.

Additionally, I came across a nice review of the story at Tangent Online. I appreciate the kind words on the story, Mr. Schmidt. I'm glad it struck a chord with you.

"Raising Tom Chambers," along with thirteen other dark speculative stories, will be available in all digital formats and in trade paperback in late May in the forthcoming collection These Strange Worlds.

Loathsome, Dark and Deep

I really enjoyed Loathsome, Dark and Deep, from Belfire Press. Here's the review I put up on Amazon a short time ago:

Speculative fiction fans have been reading Aaron Polson's excellent short stories for years now. They've been rewarded with sharp insights into the human condition, vibrant prose, and some genuinely scary narratives.

So it should come as no surprise that those elements translate well into his most recent effort in the long form, Loathsome, Dark & Deep.

Polson teams with Belfire Press to produce an attractive book. The simplicity in design (I really like the understated chapter headings) suits the story well, as this is a gritty narrative of determination and perseverance--Polson's artful spin on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Narrated in the first-person, this is the story of Henry Barlow, a reluctant hero charged with the unenviable task of trekking deep into the Oregon forests to investigate a group of mad men. As an Oregon native, I really enjoyed my trip back to the damp climes of the old stomping grounds. Even while reading this in sunny Florida, I felt the cold in my bones.

Characterization is keen: I studied his face, carrying the hypnotic tranquility of the river to the minute criss-cross of scars. They looked almost like sutures, that Silas had been stitched together from several different men, that his face was patched together as a quilt of skin. For the first time, I felt uneasy around Silas--a cold, crawling sensation slid across the back of my neck.

The voice is well-suited to the post-Civil War setting. Barlow's descriptions and dialogue are concise and clear, and the central conflict of the task is harrowing. Let's just say that the ruined men don't provide the makings of pleasant dreams (...I wouldn't believe men could climb out of the river and try to bite my face off, neither. But that sure as hell happened this morning, didn't it?).

Dark literature with a dash of suspense, this one is well worth your time...

Holiday Recommendations...

Avatar is garnering much snarky commentary out in the blogosphere. You won't get that here; I thought it was a fantastic film.

I looked over at my wife after thirty minutes and told her I'd enjoyed the film back when it was Dances With Wolves (1987). She agreed. Recycled plot points aside, James Cameron's vision here is so creative, so vibrant, so enthralling that the film is well worth seeing in the theater. I loved the framing (the shots of the destruction of the tree of life are so well rendered that the CGI's insistence disappears, allowing for raw audience emotion to surface), and the effects are stunning. The writing is clunky at times, but not to the utter detriment of the narrative. These are more like minor annoyances (Jeanne and I traded dubious glances when the talk of a "flux vortex" came up).

It's like this immortal line uttered in the disappointing film Sunshine (2007): The mainframes are out of the coolant!

Now, whenever we become a little vexed, Jeanne and I discuss the mainframes, the coolant, and the rest of the fubar mess...

Here's a review by my favorite film critic, always the eloquent arbiter of celluloid goodness. Shawn Levy's thoughts on the film coincide with my own, only I actually liked the film, in its totality, a bit more than he did. It's an 'A' for me, and I actually would like to see it again in IMAX, just to check out the 3-D.
Less successful in its execution, but not in its intentions, is Roland Emmerich's 2012. Bombastic in scope, this one is pretty fun if you look beyond all the ridiculous destruction. Woody Harrelson is awesome, John Cusack is...John Cusack, and the CGI makes for a few exhilarating moments. This one is a 'B-' for me, but still worth seeing on the big screen.

Gotta love the holiday popcorn films...

My third recommendation is Stephen King's Under the Dome. At over 1,000 pages, this one's not for the faint of constitution. That said, King needs that kind of canvas to truly diagram the destruction of small-town New England. King drills down (often with an annoying but necessary omniscient narrator) on no less than three dozen characters. Seriously, I wonder how he kept all the names straight. His office must have looked like that dude's classroom in A Beautiful Mind.

This one is about environmental catastrophe, political tyranny, post-9/11 detention tactics and, most importantly, the psychic bruise we all carry from harming others, whether that harm is physical, mental or emotional.

King is good here--as good as he was in Duma Key and Bag of Bones. Much better than he was in Lisey's Story. He takes his liberties with pacing and a portion of the text drags. Still, it cooks over the last 200 pages and the conclusion is satisfying and appropriate.

By the way, Grisham's Ford County is also pretty solid. Some of these stories are hilarious, others heartbreaking. Damn you Lawyer Wade, why must you lie all the time?

Murky Depths

Intentional or not, there is a definite thematic thread running through Murky Depths #9: The Quarterly Anthology of Graphically Dark Speculative Fiction. This fine collection of speculative fiction and graphic storytelling features many stories that delve into the artifice of humanity. The tales run the gamut in their investigation on what it means to be.

Matt Finucane's "Complaint From The Other World" is an amusing, claustrophobic and, ultimately, sad short story about a man banished to the cold confines of the wall of a nightclub. His imprisonment in the wall is the result of a falling out he has with his girlfriend, who is also caught up in a group of "cult people" (witches, essentially). I won't spoil the resolution, but it's a fine short story.

"Dead Girls: Episode 1" is an engaging look at the artificial nature of life through the eyes of a Doll, a futuristic sex toy that relies on nanotechnology for survival. Richard Calder's story seems interesting, though we're just in the exposition stage. Leonardo M. Giron's artwork is excellent--detailed and provocative. I'm looking forward to more in this serialization...

Juliet E McKenna's tale "Is This My Last Testament" is a werewolf tale with a compelling narrative style--the first-person narrator is tormented by his condition and McKenna makes him a sympathetic character straddling the line between man and beast.

Derek Cagemann's "Fast Learners" was my favorite tale in this bunch. Cagemann's voice is strong--accessible and immediate, drawing the reader into a dystopia that is redolent with grim possibilities. In this case, the issue's theme is stretched in the direction of artificial intelligence. The crux of the story--about propriety and human decency--is ironically revealed through the selfish behaviors of our disgusting antagonist, Lon, who is a human. Lon is bad news, friends, and he takes what he wants, relegating those around him--human or not--to mere objects.

This story, coupled with Nathaniel Milljour's haunting artwork, stands as an excellent allegory on how dangerous it can be to devalue our basic sense of shared humanity.

"Transported Man" is a neat story--memorable and creative. Anthony Malone's tale about the transcendent powers of the orgasm is completely tongue-in-cheek, but it also delivers a lesson: stress is relative, people. Don't sweat the small stuff!

Take a look at this prose:

Liam managed a couple of startled yells before he crashed--frantically windmilling his arms through a canopy of leaves, got his foot caught in some tangled vines, was up-ended and then dropped unceremoniously onto a carpet of rotting vegetation. Above him, between gently nodding branches, he saw a flock of parakeets scattering in an arc of blue sky. He looked to his left and noticed an army of bullet ants swarming up a twisted bough. It was like God had switched over to the Discovery Channel...Glenbuck Road was gone; in its place was endless jungle.

Neil Struthers did the accompanying (excellent) art. The look on that nun's face is priceless, let me tell you.

While these stories seem grouped under the general idea of varied definitions and interpretations of what it means to be human, the magazine also has a sense of duality. A number of these speculative stories are hilarious--there's a sense of glee and a bawdy wink in about half of them. The other side of the coin includes some brooding, almost somber tales.

The magazine, while beautifully appointed in terms of the visuals, has its flaws. There are some minor editing issues, including catchable typos on the full-color, glossy back cover. There are a few copy editing issues inside as well. Still, these are minor mistakes when factored into the overall quality and diversity of this anthology.

Editor Terry Martin is building something special at Murky Depths. If you enjoy diversity and spirit in your speculative storytelling, in addition to sharp illustrations and some keen interviews, then Murky Depths should find its way into your rotation...

Ben Thomas, Mike Resnick and Vienna Teng

I've read some fine short fiction lately. My winter edition of Weird Tales arrived, and it's an excellent read. Tim Pratt and Kathe Koja have written compelling stories, but my favorite in this issue is Ben Thomas's "The Man With the Myriad Scars." Thomas, the lead editor of The Willows, has put the desired style of that magazine (the classic weird tale) to good work in this piece.

It succeeds on a couple levels, both as an homage to Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" and as an allegory on gluttony and consumption. Thomas's narrator, an art professor obsessed with a grotesque performance artist, is well drawn--alternately transfixed and repulsed by the things he's seen. The character effectively captures the duality of why we're attracted to the dark and bizarre.

Thomas then elevates the narrative by giving the artist himself a forum to discuss his craft. There is some chilling stuff in the second act of this tale, not the least of which is the trio of tall spectres who "were not anything like men; they were like towers composed of spiders, of anemones and worms, of millions of tiny crawling things" (90).

I won't spoil the third act, but I will say that I really liked this story--compelling content and strong writing.

I motored through Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy last week. It's a good collection, with another fine piece by Champion Joe ("It Washed Up"). The best story in this batch was written by a writer whose work I hadn't encountered before in Mike Resnick. His Hugo-nominated novelette "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" is a great story--tightly written, with compelling characters and a healthy dose of moral caution.

Go to the website to read the piece.

It reminds me of the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "The Trade-Ins" for its lesson: our nature is also our best compass.

And finally, if you're looking for something new to try on the ol' i-pod, give Vienna Teng a shot. As a huge fan of pianists such as Marc Cohn and Bruce Hornsby, I've found Teng's musicianship top notch, her music consistent and beautiful.