No, this is not Stephen Kings book of that name. Rather it is me talking about things I’m doing and plan to be doing. And the song is from Jane Jensen whose album I bought blindly because it was titled Comic Book Whore, but whose music I came to love because it is all really good!

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I am currently doing some revision work on my novel. Something that I had planned from the beginning with that novel was that following it would be 5 short stories. Stories that tie into events of the novel but are not integral to the story presented within it. The idea behind those came from my experiences of reading a book or watching a movie and having questions about some story elements that were “in the wings.” Things which would never be answered, but which I desperately wanted to know more about.

The first time I had such a thought in a significant way was when reading the Hobbit. Dwarves begin randomly showing up at Bilbo’s Hobbit hole, followed by Gandalf. Eleven of them, if I recall correctly. But when I read it, I thought to myself “Was that all of them?” Every dwarf that Gandalf talked to then made his way safely to the home of Bilbo. Seems likely that some of them would have been waylaid, or otherwise derailed. Perhaps he spoke to 15 of them and only 11 managed to make the journey. And would those individual journeys of all 15 be interesting stories? Including 4 that had never been heard of. Four that perhaps died during the journey.

This idea stuck with me, even knowing that it wasn’t something I could explore. Other stories came and went of characters I couldn’t explore. Commonly known as fan fiction, but in my mind it was just someone else’s characters. I could explore them as much as I wanted personally, but not in any way in writing.

Fast forward to the development of my novel about Mary Shelley and the Shadow Covenant. As I wrote it, a couple of moments came up that I realized wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be fully realized within the pages of the novel. Writing them separate became an intriguing thought. And then the idea of publishing them in a manner to build upon the world. My plan is that after the book is done (via kickstarter), I will send copies of it to those who backed it. And there will be an option for the short stories in chapbook form. But they would be printed and sent a month later. Each one a month after the next.

In part this does a thing where people get doses of the world. Like watching a weekly tv show. Sure, binge watching is a thing, but enjoying one and then having another that will come later is fantastic. There is a buildup. This is a way to keep a story alive beyond the back cover.

So with Mary Shelley I have five short stories that will follow it. Two of them written, and the other three are currently in various stages. A key to this idea though is that nothing is being held back from the book. When backing boardgames on Kickstarter, there is often a feeling that stretchgoals were things that should have been simply part of the game. But the developer pulled it out in order to create a stretch goal. I don’t like that idea at all.

After I get everything set for Mary Shelley, I will proceed to a second novel. And that one too will get the five short story follow up plan. I assume. Hard to say exactly as it hasn’t been written yet. I could do a handful more for the Mary novel if I wanted to, and there is one that is fighting to be added as a sixth. The idea is a hard and fast rule, but the execution of it does allow for variation. I’ve always been someone who believes a story takes as much space as it needs to. And that fits here as well.

Beyond that, or rather before it likely, will be the third issue of Wanderers. Ending the first story arc and setting up the second one.

I have an anthology comic idea that I am very much wanting to produce. It would be six stories in a 48 page book, two of which would be setting up for bigger series to follow.

And then we get to 2027.

What have I got planned for that? Well, a lot. What can I accomplish? Well, time will tell.

Wanderers story arc 2

Democritus Brand rebranding and reprinting and finishing the first story. Which would lead to a new story as well!

The Core story, spinning out of the anthology.

Untitled samurai story also from the anthology.

Second novel and accompanying short stories.

A board game of some sort. I have several in the works, but getting one out into the world would be amazing.

Multi book, multi author, multi short story idea! This one will hopefully be fun.

But first there are still four months left in 2026! During which I need to learn how to attract an audience. How to market things better. How to get people invested in the stories I write (well, more how to get them to pick them up. Once they have it, I am confident they will enjoy it.)

I’ve been watching horror movies as long as I can remember. Back in the 80’s when channel 11 in St. Louis had late night movies, I was consuming random stuff. Then finding a video store with a horror backroom when I was in high school. That store also sold their movie posters, so I began getting a lot of them. Still have the Evil Dead one. I hung it in my comic shop when I opened, but took it down as it was a bit controversial and I was in a bible belt town.

But my purpose here today isn’t talking about things I like. Just the opposite. There are things that happen way too often in horror movies that are terrible. Rather than ramble, just gonna jump right in.

1) A massive thing I hate in movies, and this isn’t restricted to horror, is when two people are fighting and one has the upper hand but the camera shows us that the one we are rooting for (under the bad guy) has an item just out of reach. An item that if they get it could turn the tide. A hand reaching ineffectively towards something. Scrabbling at the wooden floor as the bad guy continues pummeling them or choking them. At the last possible moment they get the item and bonk the bad guy. All the damage the bad guy is doing is irrelevant when countered by the last minute reprieve. It feels to me as bad as the old deus ex-machina trope. Don’t get me wrong, someone scrabbling for a weapon and coming up with it can be a really good scene. When not drawn out for a stupid length of time. Scramble for it and come up with it, or don’t. In a movie I recently watched they had a great in between instance of this. The good guy was on the ground crawling for a weapon that was 4 feet away, she got close but the bad guy grabbed her foot and drug her back the other way. Oh no! She then used her free leg to kick the bad guy in the chest making him drop her other foot. She scrambled again and got the machete, turned and swung it into the bad guy. Well done, filmmakers. The sort of scene I usually hate, but done in a way that felt reasonable.

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2) Dying for a friend is a crazy trope. When there is a friend a bit outside of the story that is trying to help in some way. Our main character is in a situation they don’t realize is dangerous. The friend is looking into it and winds up getting killed as they try and help. An example if this that drove me crazy was in the Walking Dead spin off about Michonne and Rick. Michonne finds a group of maybe 30 people and joins up with them. Helping her leads to their entire group dying as they help her. I suppose this is a red shirt issue. The idea in Star Trek where some unknown characters die to make it look like a dangerous situation. But in most stories it plays out as though the main character’s life is so much more important than other people. Now when it is just something incidental, it isn’t as big a deal to me. My issue here is when that person is actively trying to help. Trying to rescue them. To extricate them from the imminent danger they are unaware of. And their reward for that is death. And a worthless death, because they don’t have any way of knowing if their help actually has had an impact on their friend. For all they know, their friend is still going to die anyway.

3) The next two are actually kinda two different things that are related. When someone is out in a dangerous situation and the bad guys might notice them at any moment. Suddenly they are grabbed from behind with a hand covering their mouth so they don’t scream. Only to have it revealed that the person grabbing them is a good friend. They go from a moment of terror to relief. But really the friend who grabbed them made things potentially worse

4) Jump scares. 95% of the time jump scares are done poorly. A cat jumps out of a cupboard. A friend grabs you from behind (see 3.) Something inconsequential that is done just to startle. I don’t watch horror movies to be startled. I want to be scared. Something I have often felt was so much better about non American horror movies is that they don’t go usually go for jump scares. They create an atmosphere that is scary. Unsettling. Creepy.

5) Boobs. Technically nothing against boobs specifically. But American horror movies tend to have this trope as a requirement for making a horror movie. Because seeing a pretty young woman expose herself is going to get people to watch. Maybe. I mean, yes. Sex sells. Always. So naked women in horror movies are always a draw. But have it make sense man. Three girls walking up to a lake and saying lets skinny dip, then undressing - this isn’t reasonable. Having a girl undress and shower is reasonable. Having a bad guy grab at a girl and rip her shirt away isn’t reasonable. It’s just weird that it has become a necessity for making a horror movie. And I’m not opposed to nudity. When it makes sense. In 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the character of Samson is wandering around naked. A rare example of frontal male nudity, but one which feels right for the story. Samson has no understanding or care about being naked. Ironically, I have another point in this that bugs me. When there is a sex scene between two characters and then afterwards she slides out of bed wearing panties and her bra. Then he gets out of bed wearing his boxers too. In this scenario, they should be naked!

6) Ignoring damage done to someone. The first time this bothered me was in a movie I actually really liked. Darkman. The main character winds up with a condition where he feels no pain. Which leads to him engaging in fights where he doesn’t falter. Being shot and continuing on. In a recent movie (Novocaine) someone with a condition where they feel no physical pain has a moment where he reaches into a deep fryer to grab a gun. We see visible damage to him, but this doesn’t phase him. He gets a lot more injured as the movie goes on, but nothing stops him. Not feeling pain is not the same as being invulnerable! If you are shot, there is damage done, just because you can’t feel it doesn’t mean you are fine. Our bodies dole out pain to us in order to make sure we stop doing things that are detrimental to us being healthy. Both of these movies are ones that I enjoyed, overall. And I know there is a whole other trope out there where bad guys get back up after being shot or stabbed. But often those are couched in the realm of the bad guy being supernatural in part. Also bad guys get to be tougher.

I’m sure there are more things that bother me, but these are the ones I had made notes about for this. I may well be making notes and doing a follow up to this. Naturally there are going to be more things that bug me at some point. Just need to get to 5 of them in order to work up a new post. If I just wrote up a substack post based on one thing I hate, it would likely be pretty short. Nah, I could make it into a longer post without trouble!

Loving horror can be tricky at times. Because the tropes that get repeated are driving me crazy. But they aren’t going to stop anytime soon. Because movie makers think that a weapon just out of reach is a nice bit of cinema. And jump scares and boobs are a time honored tradition in American horror movies.

Sometimes we hear about something we already know about. And that moment is a revelation. Leads to a google search for something which we already had an idea about. This happened to me last week when I saw a passing mention of a Fangoria list of the top 100 horror movies.

Because of course Fangoria has such a list! How could they not? So I did what anyone would. Google searched for the list. I was surprised that it was actually an old list. From somewhere between 1-2 years ago. Nothing wrong with that, other than it will have some potential movies not included. But something else came up as well. Rotten Tomatoes top 200 horror movie list.

And of course I then decided that it would be interesting to compare the two.

I should back up a bit here. Because when I saw Fangoria had a top 100, I thought it would be cool to do an ongoing series over on Cthulhuville about the top 100. My initial thought was do them 5 at a time where I give quick thoughts on each. But a question came immediately to mind. What would my top 100 be? And how would it compare to the Fangoria list. It would be interesting to do a completely out of order list of my own based on the Fangoria list. But that is a bit of a problem, because what if I have movies that aren’t on their list?

Enter Rotten Tomatoes list. They have 200 movies! How is theirs gonna compare to the Fangoria one? And now I have two different number ones (most likely (spoiler alert, they are different.)) Three if you count mine. So I still want to do them 5 at a time. And still plan to.

Right off the bat the Rotten Tomatoes list threw me a curve ball. Because their number one movie is called His House. I had noticed this movie a few months ago, and tried to watch it. It just didn’t grab me. Felt like it was built on jump scares. I want more than that. But while Fangoria claims the original Halloween is the number one, RT thought it was His House. Really? What did I miss? Because they are saying this is better than Halloween. Better than Hellraiser. Better than the Thing. Better than Elm Street!

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So I watched it. And honestly my first assessment was correct. His House sits somewhere between a documentary about refugees and immigration (from war torn Sudan to England) to supernatural horror. But the supernatural horror relies pretty much exclusively on jump scares. My feelings on jump scares… Sorry, but do better. Make a scene scary. Create tension and creepiness without relying on a jump scare. And I question why this is number one. I’m thinking it was elevated because of the social commentary and real life snapshots of the world right now. Because in no way is this the top horror movie of all time. Honestly, it shouldn’t be in the top 100. Not sure it would qualify in the top 200. Scratch that, I have over 500 dvds, and it doesn’t beat more than maybe 10 of them, plus I have watched a ton of horror movies I don’t own that outrank it as well.

So how do I make this idea work? It’s gonna take me awhile, because I feel like I need to have watched all the movies on the list. Most of them I have seen, but a rewatch can’t hurt. That means I need to watch about 10 movies to do one post! But after the first week, some things will be duplicating.

But beyond evaluating their lists, I know mine will differ massively. Because I am willing to bet that neither Cold Prey nor Rise of Reeker nor Behind the Mask are on those lists. My list will be chaotic. Because I will look at the Fango and RT lists and give a guess about where it would rank on my list and then give my version of the numbers I’m evaluating. I say this will be chaotic because I am thinking that I am likely to give a movie from Fango a ranking of 42 then later give a different movie from the RT list a ranking of 42 and then when I get to my 42 it will not be one of those! Oh sure, if I did spreadsheets and charts then I could prevent this from happening. But where’s the fun in that? When I did my A-Z horror list over here, I had a fun time with it. If I recall correctly, I had a movie with like a -7 rating and something with like a 26 rating (all this on a 1-10 scale, with potential for black star or gold star to represent 0 or 11.)

I really enjoy checking out and doing reviews of things. Been doing it for well over 10 years now, might be closing in on 20! The first site I did was short lived, Little Blog of Horrors with Cullen Bunn. Then I took over Horror-web and ran that until there was a bit of software that had a licensing issue and caused me to shift to Little Bunny Cthulhu, which lasted until my web guy failed to renew my domain (He had been doing it for years with Horror-web and then did it for 3 years with Little Bunny before dropping the ball and saying it was my fault. Yes, I’m still salty about it years later.) It is tough though to find a balance between doing reviews, writing creative projects like comics and novels, and then also doing a day job to pay bills. So at times there may be little blips in content, but it will never last for too long. If you haven’t gone and checked out Cthulhuville, you should.

Some years ago I worked out an idea for a world that I wanted to explore via novels and short stories. At the time I had the idea that there was this trilogy which would introduce the world to, well… to the world. However, I then wrote a stand alone novel in this world. I have been sitting on this stand alone book for years now. Not because it wasn’t ready to be read. Because I had this notion that the trilogy must come first.

The trilogy is in the works still. Just not falling into place as I had thought it would. And my life has been twisting in the wind like one of those car wash wind puppet dudes.

Looking back at the story I wrote, I realized it is a good starting point. While it was written with the idea of building upon the world, it works well as an introduction to the world.

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The world is about a group called the Shadow Covenant. This organization has been around as long as humanity, and they have been battling against the evil of the world. The evil is known as the Vyrm, and they comprise everything that goes bump in the night.

I have spent the last two weeks going back through the novel (as well as some short stories connected to it) and found only a few tweaks and minor corrections.

The novel is titled Mary Shelley: Birth of a Monster. This is not the story that springs to your mind. In this novel, a young Mary Shelley is introduced to and brought into the Shadow Covenant. She is young, but looking for a way to make the world a better place. The people in her life are ones you likely heard the names of before. Her father William Godwin. Her paramour Percy Shelley. Her uncle William Baxter. Her deceased mother. But in this story, Mary encounters animals that have been altered. To what end, she doesn’t know, but she feels in her gut that something foul is behind it. That foulness is being perpetrated by one Victor Schmidt, an agent of the Vyrm.

Yes, Schmidt. Not Frankenstein. The idea in this book is that Mary Shelley discovered and fought against someone whose evil nature later inspired her to write the fictional novel of Frankenstein. I learned a lot about Mary Shelley as I wrote this, and it has created a weird space for me. Because she is a character that I feel and understand, even though she has a tangible reality in our world. There are characters in this story that I created from whole cloth, and ones that I plucked from our world. But all of them exist within my mind and stories now. Which is a fun and different thing from simply creating a story from a complete blank slate. This is the first time I played with historical fiction, and I really enjoyed it. There is a lot more work in doing historical fiction though, because there were a few times I chose a word to write and then discovered it wasn’t in documented use until 1910. Can’t use that in 1814!

But challenges aside, it’s all about the story. And this story has been knocking on the door asking to be let out. When I say this is close, I mean so close I can practically feel it in my hands. Several writer friends have read it and given it a thumbs up. I have several early readers right now going over it for feedback. I don’t expect corrections to come from that as they aren’t editors. I have a cover being worked on right now. Which means my next steps are formatting it and then prepping and launching a kickstarter to raise the funds for printing.

Stay tuned for more info soon.

Oh yeah, the video this week is one that has spent a lot of time in my head for obvious reasons regarding this work. I had even toyed with rewriting the lyrics. Who knows, I may return to that idea!

I’ve collected comics for around 40 years now. I used to buy and read comics sporadically as a kid. There was a used bookstore my family went to about once a month. By the front door they had a stack of battered old comics. I would look through them and choose Sad Sack comic, or maybe Hot Stuff. Those were the first comics I recall ever buying, and I was maybe like 6 years old.

Jump forward a decade and I walked into my first comic shop. Mo’s Comics on Grand in St. Louis near Bevo Mill. I picked up Watchmen 12 from the new shelf and asked about it. The owner, Bruce, told me a little about the book and that it finally came out after a long delay. For some perspective, issue 11 came out in August 1987 and 12 came out October 1987. That’s really not a long delay. Batman 163 just came out, sorta concluding the Hush2 storyline. Not really though, it was part 6 of 12. They decided to put the second half out as a separate series now. Because that story was ending the Batman run it was part of, relaunching a new Batman series at 1. That new series launched and is currently on issue 10! How long does that make 163 late? 10 months or more really, if the other 6 issues were supposed to be part of the run. But I digress massively.

The intent was to show how long I have been a comic fan. I would say that I was buying around 80-100 issues a month. About 3-4 long boxes worth of comics a year. When I opened my comic shop, I had a rough count of 125 boxes. During the 4+ years of running my shop, I literally ordered every comic that was listed. All the indie stuff. And my read pile blossomed to about 60+ books a week! That is more like a long box a month.

Trying to run a comic shop, and a full service sit down restaurant, took a lot of time. I worked about 16+ hours a day, 7 days a week. Organizing my collection wasn’t viable. Matter of fact, I had stolen boxes from my collection for the shop. So on top of my new stuff not being organized, my old stuff was pulled out and unorganized! Some boxes I put random stuff into.

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When I closed, I utilized a bunch of unsold art short boxes for “my” books. And office depot style banker boxes. And whatever boxes I could put them in. Today I wanted to try and start organizing these books. But honestly, where do I begin? Probably 6 short boxes are unread books, but not sure which they are. I used silver age bags and would put mini series together in one bag (up to 6 issues fit easy.) Did the same for ongoing series. But if something was missing an issue, it still got bagged. Usually. Sometimes I was smart and put a note in with them saying “missing issue 3” or the like. But more often did not.

To get my collection in order, I probably need a month of dedicated time. Unbox everything. Stack and sort them all. That is tricky to try and do though, because I also need to work to pay bills. And spend time writing. And doing comic shows. And sometimes things for fun! In addition to sorting them, I should catalog them. And probably set a bunch aside to sell, because I have the equivalent of around 200 long boxes now. Oh yeah, and did I mention I still have 60+ long boxes of store inventory that are kinda mixed in a little bit and need sorting. Eventually I will get to that mythical “Other side” and my comics will be all organized again.

For tonight though, breaking down two short boxes is enough. My brain needs to put words on the page. This post is the first. After I post this, I’ll write up a review of a movie I watched tonight over on Cthulhuville. Then I have a comic short I need to work on. After we do Wanderers 3, I want to publish an anthology book. 6 stories in a 48 page book. The intent is to get that done this year, and next year will see at least two new series coming from us at Cthulhuville along with the return of Wanderers for the second story arc.

If anyone wants to come over and organize and catalog comics though, come on over.

In the creative space, I have played with writing and art my entire life. In college I took a lot of art classes. A LOT of art classes. Design. Figure drawing. Air brush. Drawing has always been something I had been drawn to. As had writing. Living in a world of imagination and trying to find ways to share that. Can we blame Wonka for this state? Sure, why not. Also I blame him for sugar!

But the reality at the time was that pursuing art wasn’t a viable thing to do financially. To be fair, neither was writing. And neither is today in many ways. Which is why I wound up going to a school where I got an electronic engineering degree. But the creative side of me has never been accepting of being put on the back burner. In my Calculus IV class my brain revolted against the 3 years I had spent doing technical work and I started drawing the entire time I was in that class.

I did work in that industry for a bit, although I managed to expand my responsibilities to include Friday being the game organizer. Which meant I didn’t have to really do my job because I had to make sure games were being played!

And during that time I was pushing to get more into the writing world. Expanding into editing for a time, because my brain can’t not find mistakes in anything I read. During this time though, I had stopped drawing. There wasn’t a plan to stop, just not enough time and energy to do everything.

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When I started working towards producing comic books, the idea of drawing was long since gone from my mind. The quality of art needed for doing comics wasn’t something I considered myself being capable of. Artists for comics need to be capable of doing sequential storytelling. This isn’t a skill that most artists have. Although as a writer of comics, I am doing sequential storytelling. Just not in visual form, I do it with words. The words that the artist will read and then convert to comic panels.

It is a wonderful and fascinating way to work.

As I have begun working with Cthulhuville towards publishing our own comics, the one thing that is a hindrance to producing as many as I would like is the cost of art. In no way am I suggesting that artists shouldn’t get paid. They do amazing work and deserve to be compensated for it. In no way would I consider using AI. Make no mistake, Generative AI is a scourge on humanity. Anyone who says “I don’t have the skills to draw my comic but AI lets me do it” doesn’t understand how being creative works. If you don’t have the skills to do it, it means you don’t do it. If you needed your appendix removed, you wouldn’t try to use AI and remove it yourself. Because that sounds crazy. As a writer, on a regular basis I hear people say “I want to write a novel.” If you have never worked on writing, then you don’t have the skill set to write a novel. I’m not saying you can’t, but you need to work to get there. I firmly believe it is never too late to start.

Where am I going with all this? I bought a sketch pad on Sunday. I’m going to get back to drawing. My current plan is to do at least a sketch a day. I have no misconceptions that I am going to be as good as Mike Mignola. Is it possible? Absolutely. I know several people who started doing art during Covid and now have careers in comic art. Their stories are uplifting.

I’m working on building a career in comics as a writer. Or rather rebuilding a start. Because I know it’s not too late to start. It’s only too late when they hit the ignite button on the crematorium.

I’m including two new sketches here. The Tick is the first one I did with the new sketch pad. So 20 years of rust being shaken off. It’s ok. Not great. But it is a day one sketch. The other is a day two sketch! (As I didn’t get this post done on Monday, I am now on day three, but haven’t picked up the pencil yet. I’m thinking Stray Dogs today. And eventually I will get to doing something without using source material.)

Or really Sullivan. Because when the amazing weekend of Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC came to an end, Cullen and I loaded up the car and rolled out of Charlotte before 4 am! Would have been much closer to 3:30 if the parking garage was connected to itself!

During the convention, I was pushing Cthulhuville and Wanderers book one. Talked to and got a couple shops to carry the book. Made some great new connections that will be yielding new projects to come. Renewed acquaintances with a lot of people I hadn’t seen in way too long (Looking at you Matt and Sharlene Kindt, we live an hour away from each other and had to drive 16 hours to be in the same room together!)

Included in that group as well are Ian Chase Nichols, the artist I met when working on the Tick back in 2017. He has a new book out called Undersea Hero. Also got to spend some time chatting with Andrew Griffith, he did the main cover on issue one of Wanderers and I had worked with him previously during the Micronauts run from IDW. Met and talked to Travis Gibb from Orange Cone comics, who does lots of delightfully dark books including a title I had picked up off the shelf years ago called Coins of Judas. Viktor Farro, a great artist that I had originally met long ago in Chicago prior to his incredible launch into the world of comic art. But to list everyone here would take forever, and the internet only has so much free space available!

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It was also a comic book convention, so would you expect anything less than a ton of amazing creators? There were. I spent about half an hour talking with Trish Forstner, the artist who did Stray Dogs with Tony Fleecs (and they currently have Feral coming out from Image.) Then there were a lot of great vendors. Gonna get on my soap box for a minute here because so many conventions these days focus on celebrity and movies. Being at a convention where the star attractions are legendary comic artists and writers is wonderful. There was a table across from me for a legendary letterer who at times had a line of people waiting to get an autograph from him. It will be a long time before I have the body of work out there to bring lines at my table. One step at a time, it will get there.

I kinda shopped a little too. Picked up a small handful of comics that fill in gaps on my Batman, Detective Comics, and Uncanny X-Men runs. Saw a first appearance of Poison Ivy for $100, but with no cover. I was tempted on it, but luckily had already spent way too much money. So willpower won the day, and I left without that particular hole being filled. My X-Men is getting so close. I have 13 issues that are missing but I think I am pretty sure I own (these are from 125 and up.) At the front I need 1,2,3,12,14,23,50. And then like 30 more issues. Being this close to having the run done is a weird feeling. Will I ever finish it? That 1,2,3 hole at the beginning is pretty hard to imagine getting filled.

But the big takeaway from every convention is always the energy flow. Being surrounded by amazing creators. People who are doing the dream. Living the life. Walking the walk. They always push me towards he keyboard. Push me towards the desire to embrace the dream and create.

I’ve said before that things are coming. Cthulhuville is working on making things happen. I am working to put out new content from several different places. I hope to take you along with me for the journey. As I’m sure I’ll say to Cullen at some point on the drive tomorrow “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.” And it was a lot of miles before we slept. No sleep til Springfield. Then I got in my car and drove another 3 hours!

When I was getting ready to start writing this a single line from a song popped into my head. “Doin it and doin it and doin it well” from L.L. Cool J. I’ll readily admit that I haven’t listened to this song in probably about a decade. I feel safe in that number though because I will go through and listen to every cd I own on a somewhat regular basis (once a decade is “regular”, and I am preparing to do it again.) So I went and found the song on youtube and was surprised about how suggestive and sexualized it was. And with an early line of “It’s our first time together and I’m feeling kinda horny,” well it didn’t have the right feeling for what I intend to convey in this post.

“What are you trying to convey?” I hear you ask. Well, I just finished the lettering on Wanderers issue 2. Ian had finished the coloring right around the time that the book ended on Kickstarter. The reason I find this important is that we are learning how to fully create comics as we go. Sorta. Not totally, I have worked with writing comics for almost 10 years (not all of them though) and been adjacent to comics for about 5 years more than that. I was discussing creating comics with Cullen and doing conventions with him from the time he started writing them.

And we had even discussed the idea of me learning to letter way back long ago, but other things drew me away from that path at the time. When Ian and I started working on the idea of Wanderers, we had a few things we were interested in doing. And I’ll be blunt about this. The idea of lettering was twofold. I had been interested before, and it would help us keep our out of pocket expenses down. It also allowed us to do something unique, in that we put out a Portuguese edition. The lettering on that version being just our time. And Ian was interested in learning to color. Which gave us the same balance, because by doing the coloring we were able to cut down expenses.

Between the two, it helped us save maybe $1500 to $2000 on issue one (and two as well.) Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely not approaching this from the stance of “don’t pay people who do this for a living.” I am working on a plan to expand Cthulhuville from doing Wanderers as our only title. This year issue three will be done and I’m wanting to also do an anthology book this year to expand and introduce some new ideas.

And next year will see those ideas begin to take shape. As we add more, it will not be viable to have Ian do the coloring on everything. He has a regular job. I’m not sure if I will try and do all the lettering, because I am really slow at it. I watched someone do a page in like 5 minutes. It takes me that long to do lettering on a page without any text on it!

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So why “doin it and doin it…” Well, because that is how the last week has felt for me. I imagine that eventually I will get better and faster. Same for Ian. But neither of us is doing comics because we want to be lettering and coloring. We have stories we want to tell. There are characters waiting to emerge from my mind. Cutting expenses where I can helps us get more of them out into the world. Building a following helps. As of today, I have done about 5 conventions and 4 store signings since writing Wanderers one with Ian. And before the year is done, I will have about 5 more conventions and maybe 8-10 store signings. This week I am actually going to be doing a store signing on Wednesday with Cullen at the Great Escape in Nashville TN and and we will be set up with a table at Heroes Con in Charlotte North Carolina for the weekend! If you are around either of those places, come say hi.

Maybe a better wording for the song would be “building it and building it and building it well.” That’s the goal. Turning Cthulhuville into a bigger entity. Getting it to the point where we have comics in stores (currently there are 5 stores with issue one, and about 5 more that will be getting issue two.) Getting to the point where we have a book coming out every month! Getting to the point where I can afford to hire a writer to do a story outside the ones that we are conceiving. These are some of the goals I have.

Building it and building it… So why did I use Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush instead? I got into Kate Bush back in 1989 and she quickly became a favorite artist of mine. When she got the monumental cultural push of being a staple of Stranger Things season 4, I was thrilled. Suddenly so many people were hearing her that never knew she existed. The idea of running up a hill, to me, always signified an overwhelming accomplishment (I don’t run, so running up a hill would likely kill me!) But entering the arena of writing comics, to me, is running up a hill. Publishers don’t want to take a chance on me. I’m new(ish) and don’t have an established following and I’m not young and hip and edgy. So instead I’m going to build something. We are going to build something. And you are part of this journey.

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(NOTE: This part is not a con) But of more immediate concern is the kickstarter for Wanderers #2, which is live right now. You can follow this link (I’m the link, click me!) We are only a handful of dollars away at the time I am writing this, but I know a few backers that are going to it today, so odds are when you see this it will have crossed the finish line.

The video posted here today is from artist Gary Bedell. He did the variant cover as well as the backer board story for issue one. This is the main cover for issue 2, but he did a short video of the work in progress. Which I personally love seeing, and thought you might as well.

(NOTE 2: This part is once again a con) If you are going to be in Springfield this weekend (May 29-31) you can come to Tremendicon. A local convention that I will be at selling copies of Wanderers as well as other things which I have written.

Last week I came upon a moral dilemma. I still collect a decent amount of comics every week. I also still play Magic The Gathering. Not as often as I would like, but I still buy cards from every new set. Specifically I buy a Fat Pack (they call them bundles now, but to me they will always be Fat Packs) for every set. Sometimes they put out a special version of the Fat Pack. And these are always more expensive as they have a collector booster pack, special D20, unique promo cards, and a unique box. So you pay a little more but get a little more.

I have to give a little background here and tell you that Hasbro (owner of Magic) has decided no longer to print a MSRP on their Magic products. But to any reputable business this isn’t relevant. If I, as a business, pay $2 for a pack of cards, then I should be expected to sell it for $4. 50% of the final price is the cost. Now with Magic, they traditionally were more like 40% discount. So that $4 pack actually cost more like $2.40, but that isn’t super important right now.

Why would a company stop using MSRP? A big part of it was that online retailers were no longer going by the MSRP and often selling things at elevated prices. By removing the MSRP, those online sellers no longer had any finger pointing that could be done at them by customers. “Hey, this should only be $4!” “We are charging $5.50, don’t like it, don’t buy it! But there is no basic price.”

So back to me and my moral dilemma. I don’t like scalpers. Specifically ones that buy something that is known to be scarce with the intent of marking it up and swindling the end user. If you bought tickets to a baseball game and can’t use them and then resell them… That is very different. If you bought 20 tickets to a “hot” game just so you could sell them at double the value… Then you suck.

The current Magic set is called Secrets of Strixhaven. And they are doing a special Fat Pack called a Codex. “MSRP” on it is $89 (and there is some debate over whether it has an MSRP, my store told me it did not but if you look online reports say it has one.) But they underprinted it due to various problems the company is having with production. I asked the local comic shop I go to if they were getting the Codex. They told me yes. I said I want one. They said it will be more expensive, close to the $200 price point. At that moment I simply said nevermind. Not interested.

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In the ensuing days though, this has been stewing in my brain. Because the store I go to is essentially saying “Hey customer, we appreciate your business and as a way to show that we are going to charge you well over double on this product you really want to buy. Give us more money or go away.” I made my decision to not buy it. But beyond that I now have an issue with the business practices of this shop. Yes, businesses are there to make money and provide a service to the customers. But they have chosen to slide that scale towards making money is more important than serving the customers. Is it wrong to expect a business to have a degree of integrity?

When I had a shop, there was a product that came out called Commander Green. My cost on it was like $28, but there was no MSRP (for reasons described above). There is an implied MSRP though based on what I know of having been buying Magic product for my store in the previous 3 years. So I priced it at $50. As it should have been. The online market though looked at it and said “This has a value of over $100 so we are going to sell it for $100.” I had customers tell me of the higher price and ask why mine was cheaper, to which I said I wasn’t willing to do that and they would be $50. I had 20 and sold those 20 to 20 different customers who were very happy to get a desired product at a reasonable price. (As an aside, I had one customer say to me “I could just buy all these from you and sell them online and make a lot of money” to which I told him “I wouldn’t sell you more than one of them, but if you are considering that, then I’m not sure I want to even sell you one.”)

How is all this relevant to me today? Because I am telling my comic shop that I am unwilling to give them my money anymore. And the reason is them being a business that is willing to scalp a new product to fleece their customers.

Where will I get my comics? Where will I get my Magic cards? Comics is easier, because there are plenty of stores that don’t engage in these predatory practices. Magic cards though might be trickier because finding reputable businesses is becoming harder. I don’t relish the idea of being out of the Magic loop again. But I’m making a stand on something I feel is important. Will the business care? Nah. They are just going to delete my pull file from their customer base, freeing up 18k of hard drive space, and sell that $200 Codex to some customer who is ok with being screwed over by their “friendly” local game store. Will Hasbro care? Nah. They are singularly focused on what they can do to make lots of money even at the expense of their games integrity. But this matters to me, even if it doesn’t resonate with anyone else.

Kickstarter and AI, but the two are not together. Felt like I needed to clarify that so nobody thinks the Kickstarter we just launched has any trace of AI. And this song came to mind thinking about the impact of AI, this is more of an individual’s life being destroyed by the allure of computerized intimacy. But I saw a correlation, so there ya go!

On to the Kickstarter part of this piece. I have a new Kickstarter that just launched over the weekend. Wanderers issue 2! Continuing the story started by Ian Johnston and myself with art by Romualdo Silva and a cover by Gary Bedell. Very excited for this project to get out into the world. It is the second of three issues in the initial story arc introducing the world of Wanderers. I’d love if you could go check out the project. Ideally then back it so I can send you a copy or pass the information on to others who might be interested. Here’s the link. Wanderers 2.

And now on to the other part of the title here. AI.

I had a discussion with an attendee at a convention I was at over the weekend. He was explaining to me about the benefits of AI (for the duration of this post, when I say AI I mean Generative AI.) And I guess he saw my jaw lock during the discussion, because he made a comment that he realized he was talking to someone who had a very different opinion. Technically he said “I have a feeling I’m about to get socked in the jaw.” Which is very not true, because I wouldn’t get physical over it. But he was also very right in that I have strong feelings on AI. As do most people who work professionally in any creative field.

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I do understand the position of non creative people. Because the idea of “I can write a novel” is appealing to everyone. But not everyone can write a novel. If you haven’t put any effort in your life into learning the skills to do art or write, then you are not entitled to be an artist. Using AI to write a novel is not writing a novel. The concept that anyone is entitled to write or create art now because AI exists is just insanity. I’m trying to think of a correlation in another industry. Just because AI lets you diagnose that someone has appendicitis and needs their appendix removed doesn’t mean you should get an exacto knife and go to town on their belly. And I know, reading this you are saying “That’s crazy, nobody is saying that.” Aren’t they? Because the core concept here is that “AI makes it where I can do it, so I am entitled to do it.” And yes, taking it to the extreme of surgery is ludicrous, because we all know that a surgeon spends years in school learning and training to do what they do.

As do artists. I had often heard professional artists respond to the question of “How long did it take you to paint this?” with an answer of “40 hours and 25 years.” Because the amount of time spent on something is always overshadowed by the years spent getting to the point where you can do a painting in a week. The same goes for writers. Josh Malerman was an overnight success when his debut novel Bird Box came out to massive critical acclaim and sales. How does one do that with their first novel? Easy, it wasn’t his first novel. He had a couple dozen already written that were “trunk novels.” Novels written and then set aside as a new one is conceived and written. The process of trunk novels is how writers get good. They spend years working on writing. Honing skills. Improving their style. And those trunk novels likely never see the light of day. Because as a writer, ideas come faster than we can produce them. So for Josh, he has continued writing and producing new works. It is likely that at some point he may go back to something in his “trunk novels” and explore it anew with the improved skills he has a writer now that he has published over half a dozen novels.

So when someone talks about how they can just put their idea into AI and have a novel they wrote, my jaw will always lock. I will tune out to the way they try to rationalize how awesome AI is. And no, learning how to craft a good prompt is not the same in any way. I don’t use AI. I don’t support the use of it. No project I’m involved in will use it. Is this new technology here to stay? Probably. But I can only hope that the pushback against it doesn’t falter. I was reading an online “discussion” about it today. Many people commenting that those who are anti AI are just gatekeeping. Not sure how that works. Am I gatekeeping people out of being writers and artists by saying that in order to do either you need to have some measure of talent? If so, then yes. I’m gonna gatekeep the hell out of that.

Now I will take a moment to defend the concept of AI that is not generative. Generative AI uses stolen works to make things that are derivative based on what they are trained on. But recently everything is being given the term AI. Google offers results that are “AI enhanced.” What does that mean though? It means that a computer is doing what a computer does. Is a google search really “AI”… Well sure, kinda. It is a computer doing what a computer does. Parsing data. And that is just it. So everything a computer has ever done can be labelled as AI. In so far as a computer is, by definition, artifical intelligence. So when I rail against AI, I am talking about Generative AI. The one that steals and is trying to put people out of a job. Not the one that is just “a computer.”

In the past few years I have been re-evaluating this. To a degree. Because there is another baseline. One that walks hand in hand with “Writers Write.” And that one is “Writers Read.”

Now don’t get me wrong, because “Readers Read” also. And there are billions (probably that many, maybe not plural) out there who read and don’t write. Which is fantastic. Because the other thing writers need is readers. And knowing which one you are is important. Not just to you, but to the art. And yes, writing is an art. Writers paint with words. The old adage of “A picture is worth a thousand words” is true. But there is another partner to that adage which I haven’t heard spoken, yet should be. “A sentence sparks a thousand pictures.” Because a thousand people will read a sentence and have a different picture in their mind. Reading the first short story of Elric by Michael Moorcock gives every reader a definitive version of who the character is and what he looks like in their mind’s eye. But my version is different from yours. Sure, now we have cover imagery that guides us in that, but when the story was written those images didn’t exist.

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When I ran my comic shop, I lost the time to write. But I forced myself to read more comics. My shop carried every independent book offered at the time. I got 100+ new titles every week. And my read stack was usually 60 of those. Because independent books need to be discussed. To sell them, I had to know them. The world knows Superman and Spiderman and Deadpool, I don’t need to tell anyone about those books. But Harrow County, Grendel, Roachmill (ok, this hasn’t been out in 30+ years), Grim, Cities of Magick, Nine Stones, Democritus Brand, etc… are books that need to be talked about. I had to read them in order to tell customers about them (ok, one of them I wrote, but I still had to tell customers about it). And those customers picked them up and were amazed at the stories being told.

But I had to read them. And a lot of them. Many were amazing. Many were crap. Although I can freely admit that most of the absolute worst comics I read during my tenure as a shop were from Marvel. Books that I actively discouraged customers from buying because they were terrible. I have read comics my whole life (ok, a few early years I slacked while waiting for my parents to teach me to read.) During my time as a shop though, I consumed a significantly higher quantity than any other time in my life. If you were buying 10-20 comics a month (probably the average comic consumer), that is significant over a year. In one month, my reading pile was more than your yearly total. And comics are a fascinating medium, because the collaboration between writers and artists puts it all right there for you. In issue two of Wanderers, the book I am cowriting with my son Ian, we introduce a creature I named a Flahf. Seeing the artist rendition of it was amazing, and the cover artist is now putting his spin on the creatures. My description was a single sentence that currently has only been seen by five people, but I can already see the sparks that ignited in others minds from it.

During my time at the shop though, I didn’t write. I also didn’t read novels. I had a book on the nightstand that I tried to consume, but reading comics was primary due to the shop. And it took me about 3 years to get through that massive Ken Follet tome!

In the past three years though I have resumed reading novels. Not one. Usually I have about six I am actively reading (and probably a dozen with bookmarks in them waiting for me to come back to their world.) There is always a book in my car, one on the nightstand, one on the game table, a stack of three or four over there. Anywhere I go I take one, maybe a different one depending on my reading mood. A physical book though, not a kindle, because I am old school and love the feel and smell and texture and weight of a book. Especially an old one.

The more I read now, the more I can feel my creativity sparking. The bellows are doing their job. Now to keep those flames burning. So many old ideas that have been waiting patiently in the wings. So many new ideas fighting for their time in the spotlight. Books and Comics and Games. Each pulling me. My current car book is a Samurai series. I have a stack of a dozen samurai books waiting on me. Fuel for a story that has been percolating in my head for years. A story that is ready to burst onto the page. The more I read this current book, the more the story fleshes out in my head.

Because in order for Writers to Write, Writers gotta Read!

I have, in the past, been accused of dreaming big. It’s the only way I know. When the thought came up about should I open a comic book store, naturally my thought was “It should be a 4000 foot shop with a good sized back issue area, order every floppy that is solicited, set up lots of gaming space, and (oh yeah) include a full service sit down restaurant with a huge menu.”

So when we, at Cthulhuville, decided to pursue doing comics, the initial story (Wanderers) quickly ballooned into an expanded idea of about 12 issues and two spin off mini series. But not just the stories comprising the Wanderers universe. I have a half dozen stories on my list to do. And Ian already has a second idea he wants to work on. I have short stories to write, and several novel concepts in the works. McKenzie has been busy with school, but has a project she wants to work on as well.

Creating comics though isn’t a cheap process, even with crowdfunding. So how does one go about being able to pay for comics creation? Having a day job to siphon funds from seemed like a good idea. But day jobs tend to eat up the hours in a day and derail the process of creating things. So the best plan is to increase the number of projects planned. And start putting more focus on doing shows. And work on finding a way to get funding to pay for said comics. And work on getting shops to support us by having our books on their shelves. And… And… And…

There is an improv comedy tenet known as “Yes, and…” Which seems to be where I am now. So many things to do. Plans to unfurl. Concepts in need of fleshing out. Blank pages filled with letters. Yes, and…

All of which keeps circling back to “Yes, and…” Which is a question I have been trying to answer for years. A problem complicated by the fact that “Yes, and…” isn’t technically a question. So where does one go to find answers when there isn’t a question?

No, this isn’t me posing an issue just so I can explain it to you. I am asking you to answer this. Fill me in. Because I feel like my future depends on the answer here. And I have gotten this far in life without answers. My default is always to push through things. Like Frodo on the way to Mordor. There was never any real plan for him, just an end game that was the goal. I just feel like my Frodo is being played by Heath Ledger in full Joker attire and the gleaming eye of Sauron is actually the Bat Signal lighting up the night sky. An analogy wrapped in an enigma stuffed into a pair of Chinese finger cuffs.

Where do I go next? I’m thinking KC. Because when given an option, going to a comic convention seems like the best plan. And there is a convenient one coming up. Beyond that one though, I have several shows lined up throughout the end of this year. Next up is Saluki Con April 18-19 in Carbondale Illinois. A show that we had hoped to have Wanderers issue 2 in hand for, but will instead be close to wrapping up the live Kickstarter for it.

And there will be more updates here on a regular basis as we move forward with the future of Cthulhuville Publications!

When it comes to gaming, I strive to never be the asshole. I am playing games for fun. Because I like to play. I really don’t care if I win, although I do want to play a good game. And don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy winning. It just isn’t everything to me. I’ll never forget playing pool with a random guy in a bar one night. He wanted to play for a drink. After about 45 minutes I had 6 drinks lined up on the table waiting for me to drink them. The guy said he was done, couldn’t keep buying me drinks. I said let’s just play for fun. He shook his head and left. The very idea of playing without the risk of losing was alien to him. Pretty sure I didn’t finish those drinks that night.

A couple of favorite movies of mine (not horror related) are The Hustler and The Color of Money. There is a line in there where Fast Eddie says “Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.” This has always been interesting to me, because I am good at pool. I have won money playing, but it has never been my goal. I worked at a pool hall overnight for about a year. One night (around 2 am) a group of 3 guys I knew were playing 9 ball. Each person put up $1 on the 5 and $5 on the 9. So two ways to win. Sink the 5 and get $3, sink the 9 and get $15. They wanted me to join. I declined, but they kept pushing. Finally I joined for a bit. About 45 minutes later with sixty of their dollars in my pocket, I went back to “work.” But I didn’t feel good about it. Sure, it was a good night. I played good pool and had more money than I started with. But at that table, for 45 minutes, I was the asshole. Mind you, they wanted this asshole (err, so to speak.) But 100% I was the asshole because I was better at the game than them, and they didn’t really stand a chance.

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What does all this have to do with comics and horror and writing? Well, to a degree it is about me, and this substack is delving into me. But it does have some relevance.

I watched a movie called Marshmallow the other day. And I was going to review it for Cthulhuville. As I worked it out in my head, I realized there is no way to write the review without spoiling it, and spoiling it (in this case) would be bad. It is really a movie where going in without knowing is the best way to watch it. But I almost quit watching it because the first 85 minutes of the 93 minute runtime are not very interesting. It is a teen summer camp movie. And I am fairly positive that I could take clips from other movies and recreate about 70 minutes of that first 85! After finishing the movie, I actually want to rewatch it with the knowledge of the ending. But I am very torn on spoiling it. I feel like I would be the bad guy doing so. The one who gave away the Crying Game ending to someone about to go watch it. The one who told you Bruce Willis was dead knowing you hadn’t watched Sixth Sense yet.

I started doing reviews when I took over Horror-Web over a decade ago, hell it might be close to 20 years ago! (Although fun fact, literally before doing that, I had started a site with Cullen Bunn that was pretty short lived.) And when it comes to reviews, you are at times the asshole. I have read and watched some terrible things. And then tore them apart. I know there are creators that poured blood sweat and tears into them. But we all know that just because someone spent an hour making dinner doesn’t mean it tastes good! As a reviewer my obligation is to tell potential consumers that it will leave a bad taste in their mouth. And that makes me the asshole. As a writer I hate having to tear into bad writing. But as a writer, I often find myself asking “Why did the publisher read this and say let’s pay this person and put this in readers hands.” Everyone does have a story to tell, but that doesn’t mean they can write.

The truth of it all is actually a truth all writers know and have to understand. No character is the villain. In their story, they are the hero. They might be the villain in some other hero’s story. We are all the asshole in the room. We are all the Bolas. Not at all times, but always at some times.

So I’m going to write my review. And put a spoiler warning on it. My site is still growing, but the handful of people that see it will likely read through ignoring the warning. I can’t be expected to avoid being the asshole at all times. If you see me as the asshole, you should thank me for shouldering the title in that moment so you don’t have to!

For all of us, a new year always brings an incremental uptick in our age. For me it happens almost instantly. January 8 (me and Elvis, but he is a bit more renowned than I.)

For all of us, a new year brings a bevy of lies we all make to start the year. “I’m going to (insert new years goal here.)” And then by February first, the goals are cast to the shoulder of the road out the window as we drive to our daily grind job (don’t litter!)

This year is a bit different for me. I turn 55. Why is this different than any other year, you ask? Because for about 30+ years now I have been claiming this birthday to herald my mid-life crisis. Often there were strange looks from people asking why 55. Because if it is “mid-life”, then I am going to 110. That’s my goal. Why have your mid-life crisis at 35? That sets you up for dying at 70. I want to live! I’m not ready to be gone yet. Hell, I’m still wrapping my head around getting my life started.

Getting started? Well yeah. I have spent my life toying with the craft of writing the same way a cat toys with a laser pointer. Well, the cat doesn’t do the toying, they chase a phantom. One they can never catch. Feels like a great analogy to how I have pursued writing. And that pursuit has been, flakey at best.

I truly love writing and creating stories, but have always been my own worst enemy. Because I always find something to derail me.

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I’m currently working on setting up an office for writing because I have found that trying to write in my normal space just doesn’t work. When I sit down at the table in the living room, the tv remote leaps into my hand and WHAM… youtube doom scrolling of news crap. Just the sort of thing that brings me crashing down. Then I put some crappy horror movie on to try and lighten the mood of the world. Pinhead and Leatherface tend to brighten a room. Well, brighten it with blood.

So a desk tucked into a corner is already in place. No tv around. CD player and record player at my back. Bookcases surrounding me… I’m ready to stop saying “I’m ready.” The old adage of “Writers write.” And the thing I have been good at doing is, well… not.

But when I write, it is good. It feels good. I get good response from it.

I know that writing is something I am good at. I just don’t give myself enough rope to hang myself. Ok, maybe not the most uplifting analogy there, but you get my drift.

The hardest thing I have been trying to do is establish a routine for me. I am currently reading the Stephen King book On Writing. A book that has been sitting on my shelf for 25 years now. And what I keep coming back to is routine. Because “Writers write.”

I have spent a lot of time doing reviews. And while that is writing, it isn’t creative. And I can’t tell you how many books I have read and said out loud “What the hell? I know (insert publisher name here) personally and how did he think this was something worth publishing? I can and have written better than this.” Not full scale novels though.

There is a novel, but I have been making excuses for not pushing it. It was intended to be a follow up to a novel series. A spinoff. And a second spinoff is conceived and roughly outlined. But the main book hasn’t been written yet.

And I have several novel ideas started. Fantasy (based on a short story I am expanding.) Fantasy (based on a character and idea that has been percolating for awhile.) Horror (see previous paragraph.) Historical horror (this waffles between a comic series idea and novel series.) Historical horror (different than the previous sentence!)

Where does this end? Well, I have a routine I am going to be putting in place and making a point of following. Things have to change if I want to see something different. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Time to stop embracing insanity.

Buy a church they said. It will be cool they said. (To be fair here, there was no “they” because the space between me looking at the church and moving in was a pretty narrow window.) What they failed to detail was the fact that churches don’t have insulation. Now this particular church is very old and the walls are about 14 inches thick cinder block from around 1900. So no insulation in the summer isn’t really a thing, because the blocks make it like a walk in cooler. Which is great in the summer. But when you get to winter…

Let’s do a quick recap. No actual insulation (in summer, cold air is heavy so stays low. in winter, hot air is light and rises.) means that all heat generated goes straight up and out. My furnace works well. And in the winter months it proves this by running 24-7. And maintaining a temperature slightly above outside. So insane electric bills and as a bonus perk, I am very cold.

But the actual perks: Stained glass windows. 35ish foot ceiling.

Windows that don’t open to let in fresh air. Windows that don’t offer any natural light ever. Windows that don’t really give you any idea what time of day it is.

But the super fun thing. Something every house has, but none of us know about. Let’s get technical for a minute. When shingles are put on your roof, they are nailed in. With lots and lots of roofing nails. Why does this matter? Because of condensation. In the winter, condensation forms on the tips of every one of those nails. This isn’t noticed by anyone. Ever. Because it’s in your attic. Why do I notice it? I have no attic. And what happens to condensation on nails? Gravity. I hear a frequent drip… drip… drip… as the condensation falls off of each nail.

Which means a few things. Can’t leave important paper stuff exposed on any surface. Like comic books. I use coasters on top of drinks because I don’t want to have a drip added to my drink. What are the odds of that happening? Well I do sometimes feel a drip plink off my head. Or shoulder. And when it is in primary drip mode, I can walk around looking at the floor and see dozens of water splats. Also, I have a bunch of cool bookends, but I can’t use them. Because I don’t want to have the top edge of books exposed to water drips. Covers are a bit more resilient to a single drip.

But the fun part happens when it is super cold. Like it has been the past two days. Single digit temperatures create a different sort of drip. Because the condensation forms on the nails, and then it turns into a tiny little ball of ice. Then the heat from inside rises making the nail warm slightly, disengaging the ice from the nail.

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Making it hail on me.

The first time I discovered this I was asleep. And woke up to hail smacking me in the face. A very surprising event that I would say not many people have experienced. You might have been woken up by hail failing on your roof, but not on your face.

I said earlier that everyone has this happen, but nobody notices it. Because it happens in your attic. And these water drips fall into your insulation. Could be a problem contributing to mold, but that’s a different problem.

One of the things I love about this though is the sound of rain falling on the roof. Outside. I can literally hear when rain starts. Often I hear rain on the roof, but when I open the door and look outside, there are like 6 drops visible on the sidewalk! And watching horror movies in a church at midnight during a rain storm! Amazing. My experience watching Color Out Of Space (for the first time even though I have owned the blu-ray since it was released) was incredible and unrepeatable. I detailed it in my review here over at Cthulhuville.

Oddly, as I finish this post, I realize that this is 100% not what I planned on writing about today. The plan was Wanderers, because the comics are here in the church (oooh, synergy!) I guess we will do that next time. (Super excited about the book being in hand and ready to ship!)

In the silent era there were actual piano players in the theaters that would play music to accompany the movie. When sound came to movies, they had trouble trying to get music lined up properly for a bit, and sometimes films had no music. Finally they got it worked out. In horror movies, you had things like Dracula where a dark music was played signifying his presence. Jumping ahead to Psycho we have, what I believe to be, the first jump scare stinger in the shower scene. Revolutionizing things in the horror genre. Then Jaws had the amazing sound accompanying Bruce’s presence (the shark in case you didn’t know his name.)

When I started the idea forming in my head about this, I intended to rail against jump scares. Specifically the stingers used. And then as I researched and realized that Psycho pretty much introduced the idea of the stinger for a jump scare… Well, it gave me pause. Because the shower scene is absolutely a jump scare and the musical stinger is perfect.

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So where do I go from there? I hadn’t even written a word and my theory was already blasted.

Which made me rethink what I was trying to talk about. And I realized it isn’t about the stinger or jump scares specifically. It’s more about false ones. The moment when someone thinks they saw something outside the window and are peering intently and suddenly a friend in the room claps a hand on their shoulder accompanied by a stinger.

The sound irritates me and the fake jump does as well. I love when soundtracks are incidental music to enhance a movie. Creepy bits are great. But the movie needs to be the focal point of the creepiness, not just stingers. A great soundtrack that comes to mind is Hellraiser. I own the cd and listen to it roughly monthly. The music feels like it is flowing from the events of the movie. The story and music working together.

I feel cheated when a jump scare is thrown at me in a false way. Will a cat unexpectedly jumping out of a kitchen cabinet startle me? Sure. But I’m going to be asking how did it get there and why was it in there. If the only reason was so you could startle me, then I’m gonna dislike you. Be better. Do better.

Jump scares are part of horror movies, I know that. And I am fine with them when they make sense. I just got done watching an Indonesian movie called Parbik Gula (Sugar Mill). A very intense and creepy ghost story with a fair amount of scenes that had jump scares and a bunch that had subtle passing scares that the characters didn’t really even notice. But the scene looking out a window I mentioned above was in this early on. Like maybe 15 minutes into a 2+ hour movie. And I almost bailed out on it. Because I don’t want to invest that much time into jump scares. I’m glad I stuck with it, because it was much more than just jump scares. But I have recently bailed out on a couple of questionable movies because they were fake jump heavy early on. And my mantra of “Be Better. Do Better.” comes out without even thinking.

Do people like fake jump scares? I know I don’t care for them (in case you weren’t sure.)

I’m not talking about like with kids. We all have those sort of impact recognition. The first time I felt this was scrolling through facebook one day about 10 years ago. I used to do the swag for World Horror Convention. A writers conference focused on horror fiction. I was making screenprinted T-shirts, embroidered polos and hats with the convention logo on them. Naturally at the conventions I would see people wearing shirts they bought from me. But a few years after having done the last of the conventions, I saw a facebook post from somebody. This wasn’t a convention photo, but there was someone in the background wearing one of my shirts. It gave me a really weird feeling of accomplishment. Something I made was being worn (enjoyed) by someone in their everyday life.

The second time was much more surreal. And when I say “second time” I actually mean a 4 year period in my life. I had a comic shop in Cuba, Missouri for 4 years. A rural small town and community. A place where nobody felt comfortable embracing their inner geek. I built a place where they found comfort. They could be the “them” that they were unable to show the world. And the people who were going to see it were “their people.” People they didn’t even know were in their town. I had people get emotional as they, for the first time, had a place. And met people who were not only okay with it, but also had the same hidden self. I know some people developed friendships and relationships after having met in my shop. At one point I was told that I was a pillar of the community. A strange thing to hear, and something that I never understood. I just was opening a comic/game store and sit down restaurant. But it really meant a lot to a lot of people. About 6 months ago I had a kid who worked for me get in touch. He told me the time he worked with me had changed his life drastically. For the first time he had someone who helped him and gave him confidence in what he could do. After I closed, he ended up moving and got a job in a restaurant as an assistant manager. Something that he attributes to his time spent working with me in my shop.

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But none of these were the catalyst for writing this. With my older kids we have a review site called Cthulhville. Where we do reviews of things in the horror/sci-fi/fantasy genres. I had gone to see the newest Superman movie the weekend it released. I try and support all comic properties as I have been a huge comic fan my whole life. My review of Superman was very mixed. Overall I enjoyed the movie, but I had many issues with it. My son had a co-worker of his message him telling him that he had just finished watching the new Superman for the 4th time. Obviously someone who loves the character and the movie. But his message was (jokingly) that he hated me and my son. When asked why, he said that after reading my review and watching the movie… that I was right. Right about what my son inquired. To which he was told everything. All the issues I had with the movie were 100% accurate.

On this one I feel really mixed. Because I stand by my views on the movie. But for that individual, after watching the movie with a more critical eye, he then questioned aspects of it. Which, as a reviewer, is exactly what is wanted.

When we read reviews from someone, we are trying to find someone that has the same ideals. That looks at things in ways we do. So that we can read about something we are interested in and make an educated guess about how we will enjoy it. Normally the only feedback we get as reviewers is seeing the stats about how many people have read it. So hearing from someone after they read a review is always uplifting.

Writing is a solitary endeavor. As is reviewing. We sit with a laptop and empty our thoughts onto the page.

I have never questioned whether or not I have had purpose in life. Or had an impact in the world. Sure, I always assumed that impact was limited to my family and friends. We all have those impacts. Both on others and on ourselves. Today, as I sit and write this, I find myself thinking about these things. About the people I have impacted. About the people who have impacted me. We live in a society where people idolize celebrities. We find ways that they have influenced our lives. Even though that small echelon of society has very little direct connection on our lives. Sure, I have met many actors from Doctor Who at conventions over the years, and that show is an influence on my life. But I guarantee you that not a single one of those actors knows anything about me, or remembers me. For me, I want to be able to talk to the people I have impacted.

For me it was an exhausting weekend, because I had to get up at 4 AM in order to make sure I got there in time for what I thought was a 10-8 appearance. Turns out I didn’t need to be there until 11. But I didn’t know that until I was up and ready to roll. And at the end of the day, I had to drive back the 4 hour trip, getting home around 1 AM. Why?

Because Ian and I were guests at TaterCon in the ST. Louis area which started at 10 AM on Saturday!

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Or 11. Because, apparently, I don’t know the difference between 10 and 11. At the TaterCon, we were promoting the first issue of Wanderers in the lead up to sending the file to the printer. Super excited for this. The convention was bigger and more well attended than I expected, but I had nothing to base it on. Other than my general policy of thinking things will be worse so that a positive outcome is gonna happen!

A minor side effect of being in KC though was talking to a Letterer who has been working in the industry for years and get his input and advice on the book. Which Ian and I took to heart and revamped the Lettering for the book on Sunday! It wasn’t “bad” before, but with the input from Shannon Potratz we had a handful of aesthetic tweaks to make and improve things. So we spent Sunday reworking it as well as plotting out and preparing to start writing issue two.

And we also found out that the artists mother passed away over the weekend. We decided to hold off briefly in order for him to do an homage image of his mom to include in the book. It is still going off to the printer this week and has us still on pace for getting the book in November to ship out.

I have some things I’m working on, but i thought I’d keep this to the appearances and the Wanderers book.

Did I mention here that I bought a church I am converting into a home? I’ll need to make a post just about that I suppose.

Right now I’m trying to focus on creativity while finding a way to drown out the insanity of the real world. Not doing a great job of it though, because … well, reality sucks right now.

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One of the things I am working on right now is finding balance with our Cthulhuville.com website. It is a lot of work trying to keep content flowing. A lot of the content I like putting up deals with movie reviews. I love watching random movies. I used to dig through Netflix watching all the crazy things nobody watched. But now I have access to Shudder and that has so many random things I have never seen or heard of. Many of them are subtitled, but I don’t mind that. It does sometimes slow things down because I have to be more focused watching subtitled movies. It always sucks when I catch myself not paying attention (maybe subconsciously I thought I knew Japanese (I don’t)) and have to rewind a few minutes of a movie. But I have also recently discovered Tubi. And if you didn’t know, they have a massive amount of random movies. Now don’t get too excited, many of them are terrible. So bad that I find myself not wanting to take the time to review them. (Did you know there are about 70 movies in the Amityville franchise now? That isn’t a good thing, and they aren’t good. I watched one called Amityville in Space, the starting premise being a priest exorcises the Amityville house from Earth! What? Yeah. But this was such a terrible movie… Some other titles: Amityville in the Hood, Amityville Death Toilet, Amityville Christmas Vacation, Amityville Elevator, Amityville Shark House', Amityville Vibrator… Maybe this has gone too far... No maybe about it, please stop making these.)

Doing review stuff is a bit of a weird happy place for me though. Because I spent a lot of time with the old site Horror-Web doing this. But back then I had a regular job, so it was just work or review stuff. Now I have about 9 things to juggle and no regular job involved (which makes it easier and so much harder!)

I have a ridiculous number of projects I am working on. Trying to get things rolling. There will be a lot of things to talk about soon. So close……

Including a couple of appearances at comic shops. More on those in the next post!