2022 – A Year in Review – Part 2 – Books

I’ve had better reading years. I’m not exactly sure why I had difficulty carving out time to read. A kind of malaise, I guess. When I picked up my iPad, I found myself playing stupid games instead of reading. I’m not a resolution-maker, but if I were, my resolution for 2023 would be to read more and play fewer games. After a number of years of reading almost exclusively on my iPad, I discovered I made better progress with physical books. A lot of what I get are eGalleys, so I can’t always go back to paper, but I will when I can.

I finished something like 37 “books,” although a couple of them on my list (see the complete list here) are more in the novella category. I will probably finish the book I’m currently reading (Swamp Story by Dave Barry) before the end of the year and maybe even get in another book or two during the long weekends ahead. Some of the books I read this year aren’t new, including four by Martha Grimes, one by Haruki Murakami and a couple of Keigo Higashino mysteries.

As I’ve said on any number of occasions, especially during interviews this past year, I’m not much of a list-maker—especially ordered lists of favorites. So, I’m going to trim my list of books finished in 2022 down to my top 12, but they will be in chronological order rather than ranked order. The titles with hyperlinks are ones I reviewed, either at my review site, Onyx Reviews or somewhere else.

Without any further ado:

  1. Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami
  2. Corrections in Ink: A Memoir by Keri Blakinger
  3. Gwendy’s Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
  4. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
  5. Fairy Tale by Stephen King
  6. Mr. Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll
  7. Call Me a Cab by Donald E. Westlake
  8. The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias
  9. This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
  10. Hell and Back by Craig Johnson
  11. The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block
  12. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
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2022 – A Year in Review – Part 1 – Publications

Time to look back at the year that will be drawing to a close in less than two weeks and ruminate. Was it a good year? Was it a bad year? One for the history books or one we’d prefer to forget?

All in all, it wasn’t a bad year at all. My wife and I both managed to get through the third year in a row without getting COVID-19, which I hope I’m not jinxing by saying that. We ventured out into the world a little bit more. Took our first flight since 2019. Spent a couple of weekends down at the coast. Dined out at local restaurants—mostly, but not exclusively outdoors, especially not that the temperatures have dropped.

Speaking of which, we’re going to have a hard freeze starting on Thursday night, with temperatures dropping into the mid-teens (-10°C) without getting above freezing until sometime on Saturday. Pretty unusual for southeast Texas, but I think unusual weather is going to be the rule rather than the exception from now on.

My big publishing news for 2022 was the September release of Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life and Influences. To my delight, the book has been very well received and reviewed (I collected many of the reviews on the page at the link above), and a number of translated editions have been commissioned. Two have been released already and at least four more are planned for next year. I have been immensely pleased by the response to the book. Safe to say it exceeded my expectations.

In support of the book, I have done a lot of interviews, both in print and online. Here they all are, in handy bullet form!

That’s not the end, though—I did one podcast interview last weekend and I have another one lined up for the middle of January.

I also published one interview where I was on the other side of the questioning: an interview with Stephen King & Richard Chizmar about Gwendy’s Final Task, published in Fangoria last February.

I published a few essays this year, too.

(The Long Walk intro won’t be published until next month and was written in 2019, but I’m including it here just because it’s so cool.)

It was also a productive year for short fiction publications—quite possibly a record year for me. Here are all the short stories that came out in 2022 (not including translations of previously published stories). They run the gamut from crime to science fiction to horror, a pretty good blend in my humble opinion.

  1. Kane and Averill, Black Cat Weekly #18, January 2022
  2. Kane’s Theory, Low Down Dirty Vote, Volume III: The Color of My Vote, May 2022
  3. Double Play, Summer Bludgeon: An Unsettling Reads Anthology, June 21, 2022
  4. Kane’s Alibi, The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, Mango, July 12, 2022
  5. Date Night, Picnic in the Graveyard, Cemetery Gates Media, 2022
  6. The Unburied Past, The First Line, Vol 24, Issue 2, Summer 2022
  7. Cold Case, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 4 (#12), 2022
  8. Death Sentence, Black Cat Weekly #51, August 2022
  9. Something Strange, Land of 10000 Crimes, September 2022
  10. A Grave Issue, FOUND: An anthology of found footage horror stories, October 8, 2022
  11. When an Alien Calls, Campfire Macabre Volume 2, Cemetery Gates Media, October 2022
  12. Good Neighbors, Gone, Red Dog Press, November 2022
  13. The Lagrange Point, Fans Are Buried Tales, Crazy 8 Press, November 2022
  14. Life Saver, Still of Winter, Unsettling Reads, December 2022

I have several stories cued up for 2023 already, too.

What comes next? My agent is going to start shopping around a novel in the new year, which is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. I also plan to write another novella for a follow-up to Dissonant Harmonies, a story that I have been calling “The Dead of Night,” a sort-of sequel to “The Dead of Winter.” I’m also toying with the idea of putting together a mini-collection of four seasonal stories, three of which were published in Unsettling Reads anthologies, the fourth yet to be written.

Beyond that—who knows?

Stay tuned in the coming days for my top X lists of books, TV series and movies, not necessarily in that order.

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Publication Day

Today is publication day for Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences. I’m quite pleased with myself that I’m now able to type out that entire title without looking it up, including the serial comma! The title was selected by my editor at Quarto, so it’s taken me a while to “learn” it! The way I remember the order is that, to me, the work is supreme. I’m only interested in the biographical aspect insofar as it influences what King wrote. All those little snapshots that somehow expanded into full-blown novels.

The reviews and reader reactions so far have been gratifying. People really seem to like this book (said in my best Sally Field voice). I hear from my publicist that the first printing is essentially sold out from the publisher and they’ve ordered a second printing pre-publication. That’s great—definitely the first time that’s ever happened to me.

The review below took me by surprise. It’s from something called “The It List” on Yahoo Entertainment, and it’s written by the Editor-in-Chief. You have to scroll down a bit to find it, but it’s possibly the only time my name will be mentioned in an article that leads off by talking about Jon Hamm!

A lot of friends and people I’ve encountered in person and online over the years have helped spread the word about this book far and wide, for which I am deeply appreciative. Shout out to Brian Keene, who mentioned it a few times this morning on Brian Keene Radio—which you should really check out, by the way. Where else will you hear Johnny Cash leading into Prince or Abba leading into Black Sabbath? It’s quite a musical education!

I still have a handful of podcast interviews to do in the next week and a half, and the signing event at Village Books is slated for October 18. It was supposed to be tonight, but the supply chain messed around with us. If you click the link in the first paragraph, you’ll go to a page that talks about the book, has links to interviews, review excerpts, and a list of places where you can buy the book online, including two where you can order signed copies.

It’s been quite a ride so far. Big shout out to Steve Roth, my publicist, who has been enthusiastically and energetically—not to mention effectively—promoting this book far and wide. It makes a huge difference to have someone in your corner like that.

Stay tuned for news about translations. Four are in the works already and I’m hopeful more will be forthcoming now that the book is out in the world.

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The Story Tree

I’ve often talked about my Stephen King origin story, how I randomly picked up a paperback copy of ‘Salem’s Lot at a used bookstore in 1979 and was immediately hooked. That book was not only my gateway to King—it stoked an interest in horror in general that had previously eluded me (save for a copy of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which I’d read many years earlier).

There was a convenience store not far from the university dorm where I lived in the early 80s. I don’t have as clear a memory of the evening I went out, probably to get some Pepsi and snacks while I studied. I feel like it was wintertime, but I’m not sure. What I do recall is seeing a paperback copy of Peter Straub’s breakout novel Ghost Story at a display near the checkout. This would probably have been in 1980, since the hardcover release was in 1979. As with ‘Salem’s Lot, I was hooked and had to read more by Straub.

I tracked down copies of If You Could See Me Now and Julia after that. I think I had already become a hardcover buyer by the time Shadowland came out and I definitely was when Floating Dragon was published in 1983. Eventually, I tracked down copies of Marriages and Under Venus (when it was reprinted in hardcover by Stealth Press), and I’ve been keeping up with his new releases ever since.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, my next encounter with Peter came about when he was the judge of Twilight Zone magazine’s first short fiction contest. I hadn’t published anything at the time, so I decided to submit something. I can’t even imagine what the manuscript looked like. Probably single spaced on mill paper (my father worked in a papermill, so we always had stacks of that cheap, brownish paper around). Certainly nothing resembling what a proper manuscript should be. Apart from that, the story was derivative and cringe-worthy. The winner of the contest was Dan Simmons, so you can see how outclassed I was. Fortunately—fortunately!—Peter claimed to have no recollection of my story. Phew.

In the 1990s, internet newsgroups (aka Usenet) was the place to be if you were a fan of something. Peter was an early adopter of the technology, active on both his dedicated group (alt.books.peter-straub) and on the King group (alt.books.stephen-king). Those newsgroups have been preserved by Google, although you have to get through all the modern spam to get back to when they were thriving places. Someone should go through all that stuff someday and curate Peter’s contributions. For example, in 1997 he wrote:

I had no intention of writing anything as ambitious as a trilogy until I finished Mystery. At that point, it seemed to me that I still had not truly come to the end of Tim Underhill’s saga, that he had more to say to me. And I thought it would be useful to combine or link Tim with Tom Pasmore, and in that way to see what Tom what like as an adult. I guess the real center of the impulse was the sense that in spite of everything I had done, I was not really finished with the story, which means at least in part that I had more to learn from it.

A lot of insights written at the time books were published. Hm. Note to self.

Peter and I started emailing each other off-list in the late 1990s. The first message I have from him was a discussion of “Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff.” He was intrigued to hear that King’s Bag of Bones was also inspired by “Bartleby the Scrivener,” which had been released as part of the Penguin 60s program, which had stories by both King (“Umney’s Last Case”) and Straub (“The Blue Rose”).

In 1997, Peter was touring in support of Magic Terror and had an appearance in Dallas. I let him know I’d be attending and gave him my (first-ever, brand-spanking new) cell phone number. I made the three-hour drive up I-45 to Dallas and spent some time getting the lay of the land—I’d never been in Dallas before other than DFW airport. I had just tracked down the store where the signing would be held when my phone rang. It was Peter, inviting me to drop by the hotel where he was staying for a pre-event drink. It took me far longer than it should have to find the place (no Google maps in those days!) but I eventually got there and met Peter in the bar. He had a couple of scotches to brace himself for the signing and I gamely kept up. He invited me to join him in the limo taking him to the event. (I was thankful for that after a couple of stiff drinks!) Afterward, he asked the woman who was assigned to escort him around for a restaurant recommendation and he invited me to join him for a very meaty Dallas meal. I don’t really remember much of what we talked about, but it was an evening for the ages. I do recall that he introduced me to the works of someone who would become another favorite author, Graham Joyce.

A few years later, Peter was back in Dallas, this time at a literary event held at the Texas Motor Speedway Club in Fort Worth. (Tony Hillerman and Dan Jenkins were also in attendance, along with some other authors). I met up with my online friend (and uber-King collector) Bob Jackson (who contributed scans of rare material to The Stephen King Illustrated Companion), and we hung out with Peter and his wife for part of the event. Bob took this picture.

I saw Peter again that year at my first World Horror Convention, in Seattle. I had just started writing the column “News from the Dead Zone” for Cemetery Dance and had a few stories in an amateur anthology called Royal Aspirations III. I remember sitting at a table in a hallway outside of the programming rooms beside John Urbancik, trying to hawk our wares. Peter came by and I hailed him. John immediately offered to give Peter a copy of one of his books. Peter pulled out his wallet and offered to buy a copy of our books. That’s the supportive kind of guy he was.

In 2004, Peter was kind enough to supply a blurb for my first book, The Road to the Dark Tower. He wrote, “Bev Vincent is a true King insider, and all of his knowledge radiates through this comprehensive meditation on the Dark Tower books. His book is essential to every reader of Stephen King’s magnificent work.”

He was gregarious and funny. What other writer would create an alter ego to mock his work? Professor Putney Tyson Ridge (the Chairman and sole member of the Department of Popular Culture at Popham College) was a frequent poster on Straub’s website, critiquing—nay, savaging!—most of his novels and collections. In her 2009 interview for Salon, Laura Miller described PTR as “the man Straub might have been if he’d gotten stuck in academia.” At some point, Peter decided to put Ridge out of his misery, posting his obituary.

I know horror authors who are fans of soap operas (Brian Keene, I’m looking at you!), but how many do you know who actually appeared on a soap opera? Peter had a recurring role on One Life to Live as the blind retired cop Pete Braust that seemed to delight him.

We crossed paths many times over the years. He was a regular at NECON until his doctor reportedly forbade him from going. I remember the year the conference was held at Salve Regina in Newport, R.I. One evening a small group of us sat with him at a table on a covered deck while he regaled us with stories, fueled by a special bottle of vodka brought by one of the attendees. He was excited to tell us every detail of his as-yet-unpublished novel In the Night Room. There was a scene where a man looks through the window of a house and sees someone inside. “That’s it!” he said. “That’s what the book is all about!” Another memorable conference appearance was the time he and Gahan Wilson participated in a fundraiser where they took suggestions from the audience for illustrations for Wilson to draw on the spot. That was fun.

His wife recognized me in the audience at the Wavedancer Foundation benefit in New York and insisted I come back stage to where Peter, Steve, John Grisham and Pat Conroy were waiting to go on stage. I have a signed copy of the large-text edition of Black House from that event. I also saw him with his daughter, Emma, at an event in Brooklyn where the two Straubs shared the stage with Owen and Stephen King.

He read from “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” at the World Horror Convention in San Antonio. Afterward, I went out to the lobby and tweeted about the reading and how much I was looking forward to reading the entire novella. Then I went into the next panel, which was about graphic novels. Halfway through, Peter came in and sat beside me. In his stage-whispery voice, he told me about his own experience with graphic novels—The Green Woman, co-written with actor Michael Easton–and then proceeded to rummage around in his bag. He produced the manuscript of “Ballard and Sandrine,” signed and inscribed it and gave it to me. That’s one of my treasures.

I’ve read just about all of Peter’s fiction. Sometimes I struggled with his shorter works, but I always thoroughly enjoyed his novels, especially the way they seemed to inspect each other from different points of view. I think I’ll have to go back and reread some of them. Bill Sheehan’s terrific book At the Foot of the Story Tree stood as a model for me about how to explore a writer’s career. Sadly, it only covers up to Mr. X in 2000. Maybe Bill could be convinced to do an update? That would only involve four or five novels, a couple of short story collections, five novellas and some non-fiction.

Although we are all sad at the loss of a fine writer and a great man, it has been heartening to see tribute after tribute on Facebook. So many people had either long, ongoing friendships with him or shorter but memorable and inspiring encounters with him. He seemed to have time for everyone he met, especially in public, but not only there. He was fun-loving, gregarious, supportive, energetic, intelligent and kind. And a helluva writer. He shall be missed.

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Here there be ‘skeeters

A week from today is the official publication day for my new book Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences (and, yes, I have to look up the title every time I write it down—it was chosen by the publisher). I’m in full promo mode for the next several weeks, so you’ll probably get tired of hearing from me about it! So far, I talked about the book on Geek to Me Radio, during an interview segment as part of the Stephen King Rules Dollar Baby film festival, and, most notably in the Between the Lines feature of The Big Thrill newsletter from the International Thriller Writers.

The Big ThrillWhy most notably? The newsletter’s managing editor suggested that instead of doing the interview herself that I should ask Stephen King to interview me. They had done that before with Lee Child. I was understandably nervous about passing this request along to King. It’s not the sort of thing we normally do. I have interviewed him a few times in the past and we interviewed each other for the audiobook release of Flight or Fright, but this felt like a big ask. Fortunately he agreed without hesitation and the interview is the cover story for the issue. Even got my smiling face on the cover! Check it out—it’s pretty cool.

Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences

There have been a few reviews already and I’ve been pleased by the early response. You can read excerpts from the reviews here, along with links to the original publications.

I also had time to review King’s new book Fairy Tale (out today) for Cemetery Dance Online/News from the Dead Zone. The review was posted on Friday.

To get ready for the promo blitz (I have six video interviews set up this month and just finished writing up an email interview), my wife and I spent a long weekend in a beachfront house in Surfside Beach, about 90 miles from where we live. It’s a favorite getaway destination. We knew there was a decent chance it would rain all weekend, but we didn’t care. Our usual rental house was already taken, so we stayed in a different place, one that’s bit smaller but exactly right for us. It’s off the beaten path, whereas the other place is across the street from a busy restaurant with occasional bands playing late into the night. This new place is a lot quieter.

During the first night, we were awakened by brilliant flashes of lightning that were almost simultaneous with crashes of thunder that shook the house. (That’s not hard to do—houses there are on stilts to guard against flood damage.) The rain was vigorous and long-lasting. The lightning was intense. We enjoyed it.

Case del Agua

However, it didn’t rain all that much after that. A few showers here and there, although it often looked like it was about to rain. We went for a walk on the beach one day but soon discovered the reason why the realtor had recommended we take mosquito spray with us. That nice green expanse between the house and the beach, which is a vegetation-covered dune, was home to swarms of mosquitos brought to life by the rain we’ve had over the past few weeks. They attacked us en masse. It was so bad we decided not to hazard the 30-foot trek again. Ferocious bastards. In the evenings when there was a breeze we could sit on the deck without being attacked, which was nice. There were also swarms of dragonflies, which were fascinating to watch as they darted about, feeding on mosquitos. Apparently each one could eat dozens, if not hundreds, of them every day, so they were our friends and we cheered them on.

I read three books while we were there. Two of them were different takes on similar subjects: ripping off money from drug dealers. First, I finished The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias, which has a mildly supernatural take on the subject. Then I read Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner, the literary sequel to the 1995 movie. If I’ve seen Heat, I don’t have much memory of it. The book does a good job of bringing readers up to speed, and it is simultaneously a sequel and a prequel to the events of that film. I thought I’d be covered with those books, but I was finished with them by Saturday. Fortunately, there were several books in the rental house, so I read a cozy mystery called Third Degree by Maggie Barbieri on Sunday.

This has been a bang-up year for short story publications. I have sixteen new stories either already out or scheduled before the end of the year. Recent pubs include:

Convergence talks with contributors (including me) to Low Down Dirty Vote, a crime fiction anthology focused on voter suppression that contains my story “Kane’s Alibi.”

I also stumbled upon this nice review of my story in Road Kill V6: “The standout of the anthology is ‘The House of Sad Sounds,’ by Bev Vincent. A psychological horror story with a twist, this little gem reminded me of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Vincent’s story would not be out of place in a high-literary story collection, and not because of any fancy stylistic tricks or high-falutin language.”

I discovered there were two feature-length installments of Midnight Diner, one of our favorite Japanese series. Set in a Shinjuku diner that is only open from midnight to seven a.m. and run by a mysterious scarred man known only as “master,” each episode features a particular dish that has resonance for one of the diner’s colorful patrons. Only one dish is posted on his menu, but he will make anything anyone requests, provided he has the ingredients. It’s charming. The two movies are only available on the Viki Rakuten app, but they’re only 99¢ each, which can be linked to your iTunes account. They take place between the three-season Midnight Diner series and the two-season Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories series. With the increased length, they allow a somewhat deeper dive into the characters outside of the diner, but only a little. The series is based on a manga called Shin’ya Shokudō. It’s also been adapted into Chinese and Korean versions.

I’m all in for House of the Dragon, though I’ve only seen the first two episodes so far. I’ve also seen a couple of episodes of She Hulk, which is cute and doesn’t take itself all that seriously. The best thing I’ve seen recently is a German Netflix series called Kleo. It’s set in the Berlins in 1990, after the wall came down but before reunification. Kleo is an East German assassin who was sent to prison by her handlers in 1987 for unknown reasons. Political prisoners are released in ’90 and she’s free to travel now, so she’s hell-bent to find out who betrayed her and why. The show reminded me a lot of Killing Eve, and it’s star, ‎Jella Haase, bears more than a passing resemblance to Elizabeth Moss. It has some slapstick moments, but it’s also bloody and violent. Just my jam.

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Musical whiplash

Publication of Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences has been pushed back a month due to supply-chain/transportation issues. Getting the book from the printer to the warehouse is proving to be complicated. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t preorder the book, if you’re so inclined. Just click the link above to get to a page that has information, including where you can order a signed/personalized copy. The delay means an extra month of promo. It also meant that the Village Bookstore, which is hosting a launch event, had to rearrange everything quite late in the game.

I’ll be talking about the book when James Douglas interviews me during the Stephen King Rules film festival next weekend. My spot is on Sunday, August 21 at 4PM CT. This is the first of a number of interviews I’ll be giving in the coming weeks. The following Sunday night, I’ll be on Geek to Me Radio. I’ll be interviewed by the Crime Writers of Canada in early September and by Jeff Rutherford for his Reading And Writing Podcast as well. Check out my message board for more information as it becomes available.

There will also be something really cool happening on September 1st that I’m dying to talk about but can’t until it happens. Stay tuned!

We finally had another batch of rain after a three-week dry spell. When we go out, my wife and I only eat at places that have outdoor seating these days. There’s a place near us called the Kitchen that makes my wife’s favorite chicken sandwiches, so we go there fairly often. It was starting to rain when we pulled into the parking lot, but there’s a cover over the patio, although three sides are open. While I was inside placing our order, a squall started, with rain blowing horizontally, strong enough to push the chairs around. So we had to get our food to go. It was a good rainstorm, though. Much needed. The grass took advantage of it and started to grow all of a sudden. I had to mow the lawn for the first time since probably late June. It’s been hot ever since, but they promise us a week of rain starting in a couple of days.

I’ve had a rash of short story acceptances lately, some of which I haven’t yet announced because I haven’t signed the contracts yet. Here is what to look forward in the coming weeks and months:

  • The Unburied Past, The First Line, Vol 24, Issue 2, Summer 2022
  • Cold Case, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 4, 2022
  • Death Sentence, Black Cat Weekly #51, August 2022
  • Something Strange, Land of 10000 Crimes, September 2022
  • A Grave Issue, FOUND: An anthology of found footage horror stories, October 2022
  • Good Neighbors, Gone, Red Dog Press, November 2022
  • Aliana, Shining in the Dark, Dimensiones Ocultas (Spain), December 2022

Alas, I won’t be at Bouchercon when the anthology containing “Something Strange” comes out.

Those of you who’ve followed me for a while know that Brian Keene and I often discuss music. It was the motivator behind our collaboration Dissonant Harmonies. Recently, Brian started up his pirate radio station again and I started listening to it about a week ago as I work. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I tweeted words to the effect “Want to get musical whiplash? Listen to Brian Keene Radio. Bounce from heavy metal to hardcore rap to folk to country to yacht rock to pop to classic rock to horror short stories read by a variety of authors.” I consider myself fairly up on the music of our generation, but there have been some real surprises in his playlist that have me adding music to my iTunes console left and right. Check it out — just google the phrase. It plays through your browser. The juxtaposition of songs will have your head spinning. I guarantee it!

Since my last post, we’ve watched a handful of movies and documentaries. The best of the lot is Thirteen Lives (Amazon), about the rescue of the boys on a football team trapped in a cave during a monsoon. The Ron Howard film is truly excellent. As a follow-up, we watched the documentary The Rescue on Disney+, which sets the record straight, so I’m glad we watched that second. We enjoyed The Day the Music Died, about Don McLean’s most famous song. I also liked the documentary about Shania Twain, Not Just a Girl. The documentary Pennywise: The Story of IT is well worth a watch. Great interviews with the surviving cast and crew members, as well as terrific behind the scenes footage from filming. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a quirky film starring Emma Thompson that has what can only be described as some brave scenes. The Gray Man on Netflix is entertaining, especially because it has Ana de Armas.

On television/streaming, as with many people I am still processing the finale of Better Call Saul, which stuck the landing and then some. It turned out to be a love story after all. The Bear (Hulu) is an interesting story about running a small Chicago family-owned restaurant and dealing with all the crap that goes along with that. Black Bird (Apple TV+) is a series from Dennis Lehane based on a real serial killer case. It’s gripping and has a terrific cast. While I was looking up something else, I realized I’d never watched the final season of Homeland, so I rectified that. It was a good way to go out. Then I binged through The Orville: New Horizons, which takes what was originally parody or spoof and turns the show into serious science fiction tackling some big issues. I watched a couple of Britbox shows that were good, Crime and The Tower. I’m currently in the midst of the second season of a Brazilian crime series called Good Morning, Verônica (Netflix). It’s not as polished as some of the European shows, but it’s decent.

I’m currently rereading Stephen King’s Fairy Tale in preparation for writing my review. I recently finished Mr. Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll and Call Me a Cab by Donald E. Westlake (reviews available at the links) and Ocean State by Stewart O’Nan, which I haven’t reviewed yet.

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It rained yesterday

We were starting to think the clouds had forgotten how to throw water from the sky. My wife and I were having supper at one of the handful of local restaurants we frequent (we only go to places that have outdoor seating) when the skies opened up and pelted the earth for quite a while. It was a good soaking. We had to move from our table at the edge of the covered patio to keep from getting splashed, but otherwise we enjoyed the storm—especially the drop in temperature it brought.

Because it has been aitch-oh-tee HOT lately. Well over a hundred degrees every day for about three weeks, with “feels like” temps around 110°. Too hot to do much of anything but stay inside. It’s a momentary reprieve—after today we’re heading back to triple digits again. And August is usually our hot month. The Gulf of Mexico is probably as warm as a sauna, which means any storms that end up there will get stronger fast. Could be an interesting summer.

Less than two months until the release of my book Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life and Influences. On publication day, I will be appearing at the relatively new independent bookstore in our community, Village Books. While the event is free, seating is limited, so reservations are required. For people unable to attend, the bookstore is happy to ship signed/inscribed copies via this link. The link will remain active after the event—if someone orders a signed copy, I’ll drop by the store to spill some ink on the book.

A while back, Brian Freeman asked me if I thought there was an essay to be written about Stephen King books that had different original titles. I agreed that there might be enough there to write about. The result is a lovely chapbook called What’s In A Name? What makes this chapbook particularly special (in addition to the fact that is limited to members of his Lividian Publications patreon) is the fact that he got François Vaillancourt to create book covers for these discarded titles, making a gorgeous little booklet. Although it is out of print on publication, François has created a poster featuring his alternate covers. To learn more about that, see his Facebook post from July 14, 2022.

This is proving to be a productive year for short stories. Here are my recent and forthcoming publications:


When we were on vacation last month, I discovered a copy of Belle Ruin by Martha Grimes in the rental house. It’s the third book in a four-book series featuring 12-year-old sleuth Emma Graham. I decided to go back to the beginning and read Hotel Paradise to my wife in the evenings. Interestingly, we don’t learn Emma’s first name until the closing chapters of the book. Now we’re moving on to Cold Flat Junction. I also tore through Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay and am currently reading Three-Edged Sword by Jeff (Dexter) Lindsay. It’s the third caper in his new series featuring the world’s best thief.

We watched a few foreign movies recently: Toscana, about a Danish chef who has to return to his estranged family home to settle the estate and The Rose Maker, a charmer about a woman who hires three people on a prison work-release program to help her save the family business. Peace By Chocolate would also qualify as a foreign movie, I guess—based on the true story of a family of Syrian refugees who end up in a small town in Nova Scotia and start a wildly successful chocolate business. I watched Buried in Barstow because I’ve always liked Angie Harmon. We watched No Time to Die, which I thought was entertaining and then, the other night, Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was fascinating, innovative, creative and thought-provoking. Although much has been about its themes of nihilism and meaningless, to me it was the story of a woman suffering a nervous breakdown because she was dealing with four or five major life crises all at once. I highly recommend it, although I have to warn you that it can be overwhelming!


Lots of TV to talk about. The final episode of Barry was dark and intense, making me wonder how they’re going to pick it up next season. I went back to Russian Doll and finished it, although I wasn’t quite as engaged as I was during the first season. I also went back to Hacks and finished it—the first couple of episodes were hard because Jean Smart’s character was so unlikeable, but things get turned around by the end in a good way. I enjoyed Borgen: Power & Glory, the Danish political series about the discovery of oil in Greenland that threatens to topple the power balance between Denmark and it’s colony. Of particular interest is how the main character allows herself to throw aside some of her fundamental beliefs to the extent that people don’t recognize her any more. Then she has an epiphany.

We are enjoying The Old Man on Hulu, a terrific espionage thriller. Amy Brenneman’s character is particularly interesting, as is the intriguing character played by Alia Shawkat. Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow are excellent in it. I blazed through The Lincoln Lawyer. Great to see Neve Campbell again, and Becki Newton pretty much stole the show. We thoroughly enjoyed the Yellowstone prequel 1883, which is gritty, dark and quasi-mystical, but we couldn’t get into Yellowstone itself.

Of course I polished off the final two episodes of season 4 of Stranger Things, which I’ll be writing more about for Dead Reckonings with Hank Wagner. We are also watching the original three seasons of Midnight Diner (not to be confused with Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, which are the later seasons), a charming series about a Shinjuku diner that opens at midnight, thus attracting an unusual set of patrons. At its heart, it’s about how certain foods transport us back to seminal moments from our childhood.

Season 2 of Grace, starring John Simm, is good, although the plots are based on some well-worn mystery tropes. The motivator for Redemption, starring Paula Malcomson, is fascinating. A British cop gets a call that her estranged daughter has been found dead in Dublin, so she goes there and gets herself attached to the Garda so she can dig into the death, look after the two teenaged grandchildren she didn’t know she had, and also deal with the crime-of-the-week.

My most recent discovery is Manifest, which has strong Flight or Fright connections, as well as showing its Lost influences. It’s about a flight from Jamaica to NY that vanishes, only to land 5½ years later. For the people on board, no time has passed at all (which sets up an interesting situation with a pair of twins, one of whom was on the flight and the other wasn’t). In the aftermath, the passengers experience “callings” that give them missions they have to figure out and solve. Of course, the government wants to figure out what happened to the plane, and factions arise that think the passengers are either angels or demons. It’s a little frothy, but I’m enjoying it. NBC canceled it after the third season cliffhanger, but Netflix is resurrecting it for at least one more.

Glad to see Better Call Saul back for its final episodes. There will ever be a debate about whether it was better than Breaking Bad or not. As Odenkirk said in a recent interview, this show wouldn’t have been possible without Breaking Bad.

Hey—Alan Parsons has a new album out today. I know what I’ll be jamming to while I work!

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Back in my prime

For my birthday this year (“prime” refers to my age), my wife and I went to one of our favorite vacation/getaway spots—a rental house in Surfside Beach, TX called Land’s End. It sits behind a grass-covered dune on the Gulf of Mexico and is the setting and inspiration for my recent short story “The House of Sad Sounds,” which can be found in Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol. 6. We’ve been there several times over the year (after our previous favorite went off the rental market), but it’s been three years since our last visit. Far too long. Going there again has been one of my persistent fantasies and dreams during the pandemic lockdown, and it was so nice to be able to return. The house is far too big for just the two of us (it would comfortably sleep eight), but the location is perfect and we know where to find everything in it. Other than a trip to California to visit with our daughter and her family a while back, it was our only trip away from home since 2019.

We spent most of our time on the deck facing the gulf, listening to the constant roar of the surf and watching the antics of people visiting the beach. It’s one of those rare beaches where people are allowed to drive their cars along it and park. Parking is now restricted to the dune side of the beach, probably inspired by numerous people who parked on the water side, not realizing how quickly the tide can come in. On a previous visit, we had an entertaining afternoon watching a vehicle get hopelessly stuck in the wet sand only to have the “rescue” vehicle that tried to pull it out get mired in the sand as well. An enterprising local was able to pull them both free eventually.

Land’s End

The main deck is beneath an upper deck perched above the roof. We seldom go up there because there’s no protection from the sun, but it is a nice lookout and it provides shade most of the afternoon for the lower deck. As long as there was an onshore breeze, we weren’t bothered by mosquitos or other annoying flying creatures, too. It was hot and occasionally quite humid, but just being outside in all that fresh air was restorative. The house is also directly across the street from a nice restaurant that has tons of outdoor seating, one of our prerequisites for any dining establishment these days. As soon as we unloaded the car after we arrived last Wednesday afternoon, we went across the street and had a couple of frozen margaritas on their deck. Vacation had begun!

We didn’t do much but relax. Watched no TV; read no news. We went on a walk on Thursday afternoon and were caught in an unexpected rain squall, but it’s the beach—who cares if you get a little wet! The rest of the time we listened to music, played cards, prepared meals, drank wine, read and just chilled. Heavenly. There was an impressive rainstorm on Thursday evening that pelted the house with rain and wind, but we were already tucked up in bed by then so it didn’t bother us at all.

It was fun to watch the families playing on the beach, too. The most entertaining thing was saw was two men and a boy trying to set up a beach canopy. It was an unusual design, one I’ve never seen before. It consists of a hoop that supports one end of the canopy. The other end is supported by the wind—it apparently requires only a 2-4 mph breeze to hold it up, sort of like a windsock. I found the model’s website and it says it takes only a few minutes to set up. These two guys worked at it for well over an hour without any success. There was probably beer involved. The young boy played in the sand while they tried to figure it out. Eventually they gave up, packed it in and left.

This is what it was supposed to look like

Surfside Beach is adjacent to a shipping port (Freeport), so large ships containing LNG (there was an explosion at the LNG terminal a few days after we left), LPG, cars and other sundries are always coming and going. We found a website that gave information about every boat and ship that arrived at the port. We could tell where a ship came from, how long it had taken to get there, what it was carrying, etc. Tugboats and pilot boats were always going back and forth to escort the ships into the port. One of them was called the Poseidon but, so far as we saw, it remained right-side up.

We packed up our things on Sunday morning and headed home (a two-hour drive), giving us time to wipe off the sand, do the laundry, stock up on groceries and get ready for a new week. Can’t wait to go back!

We are still living in a pandemic world. As I mentioned, we only dine at establishments that have outdoor seating. Since we’re currently in a heatwave, with daily temperatures in the high nineties, we often have the patios to ourselves. I turned down a chance to be on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con and won’t be attending NECON this year, either. Still not ready to be indoors among a bunch of unmasked people for prolonged periods. I’m eyeing Bouchercon in September as a possibility, especially since I have a story in this year’s anthology, but I’ve made no definite plans yet.


I’ve got quite a few stories in the queue for the rest of 2022. I just signed a contract for my first appearance in The First Line with a story called “The Unburied Past.” It’s an intriguing concept—every story in a particular issue starts with the same first line. The opening line for the Summer 2022 edition is “Thomas hadn’t expected to be alive when the town’s time capsule was opened.” Funny thing—the story I submitted to them was originally written in 1999 and called “Time Capsule.” It had garnered something like 10 rejections over the years but it was a perfect fit for this market. I had to revise the first line, of course, and the original version was in first person so that necessitated some changes. The editors were really good, too, at picking up on some problematic plotting issues and suggesting improvements in a few places. It’s rare to get that kind of feedback in the short fiction market.

I found this blog post that does a deep dive into the playlists Brian Keene and I provided for each other for our collaboration Dissonant Harmonies. It’s always nice to see someone else’s thoughtful perspectives on a project.

Also debuting in a couple of weeks is Summer Bludgeon: An Unsettling Reads Anthology, which contains my story “Double Play.” It’s a crime story that was inspired in part by a rather unpleasant smell I encountered one hot summer day a few decades ago.

We thoroughly enjoyed 1883, although we found Yellowstone itself to be rather dreary and cut out in the middle of the first episode. I’m all caught up with Stranger Things (which Hank Wagner and I will be writing about for Dead Reckonings) and eagerly awaiting the final two episodes. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is keeping us entertained (the shore leave episode was a delight). We started the second season of Hacks last night, but my wife found Jean Smart’s character to be so unpleasant that we may not continue it. I watched the first episode of the second season of Russian Doll and I’m not sure I was engaged by it, either. I’ll probably try the new season of Borgen before giving it another go. I’m also looking forward to the final episode of Barry.

For movies, we found Lost City to be good, light entertainment. An episode of Strange New Worlds had me thinking about submarine movies, so we watched The Hunt for Red October, which really holds up after 30 years. I’d forgotten Tim Curry was in it. A couple of nights ago, Focus granted us a free screening of Downton Abbey: A New Era, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Definitely a feel-good movie. I’m really surprised that we’d managed to avoid spoilers about one of the more dramatic incidents, and I’m glad we did.

I’m just about finished reading The Talented Mr. Varg by Alexander McCall Smith to my wife. While we were on vacation, I found a copy of Belle Ruin by Martha Grimes on the shelf in our rental house and I read it cover to cover. It’s the third book of a four-book series, so I plan to go back to the first one as my next book to be read to my wife.

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Let’s talk about me for a minute

Alan Parsons Project fans will recognize that line from their Vulture Culture album. That one came out when I was a grad student and before I had a car, so I had a 20+ minute bus ride from my apartment on Cowie Hill in Halifax into the Dalhousie University Department of Chemistry. I had a Walkman and I remember vividly listening to that album on several of those trips. I don’t readily pick favorites of anything, but that record will always have a fond place in my memories.

In a different world, I might have been at StokerCon in Denver this weekend, but I’m still not ready to spend long stretches of time indoors with hundreds of people. COVID is still out there in full force and even if everyone was masked it would still be a greater risk than I’m willing to take, even with four doses of Moderna training my immune system. I’m probably not going to make NECON this year. I’m holding out hope for Bouchercon in September—that was the last convention I attended before the plague and I really enjoyed it. Plus, I have the added incentive in that I have a story in the annual anthology and it would be fun to meet up with the other contributors and promote the book.

Promotion is part of the writing biz. It comes easier to some people than others. As a Canadian, talking about myself and my work isn’t in my nature, but it’s necessary to overcome that reticence. Other people’s livelihoods can depend on the success of a particular project, especially when that project is an anthology. As contributors, we have to band together and get the word out—it’s for everyone’s benefit. So, deep breath, prepare yourself for some promotion!

My story “Kane’s Theory” appears in Low Down Dirty Vote, Volume III: The Color of My Vote, which drops on May 15. This charity anthology is raising $10,000 for Democracy Docket, an organization that is successfully fighting against voter suppression in the United States.

Today over on Writer Unboxed, several contributors offer behind-the-scenes looks at their stories and the anthology’s theme, in a blog entry called Writing Wrongs: The Color of My Low-Down Dirty Vote. Comments are welcome!

Then, on Sunday, editor Mysti Berry and a selection of authors will be launching LDDV3 on Crowdcast. We’ll each spend a few minutes talking about the anthology, our inspiration, and/or reading from our stories. Session one features Katharina Gerlach, me, Sarah M. Chen, Travis Richardson, Camille Minichino, Ann Parker, and David Corbett at Noon PDT | 3pm EST, while Session two features James McCrone, Tom Pluck, Jackie Ross Flaum, Miguel Ramos, and David Hagerty at 3pm PDT | 6pm EST. Click the links to register for this event. The book is available for pre-order now from all the usual places.

A week or so back, I spent an hour with David Agranoff and Marc Rothenberg discussing my publishing history and experiences for the Postcards from a Dying World podcast. That interview went live today. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts or watch us on YouTube.


I finally finished my rewatch of The Shield. Man, that finale is still as powerful as it was nearly fourteen years ago. Moving on to We Own This City, the new HBO Max show from David Simon and George Pelecanos, felt like a natural transition. This show feels like a cross between The Shield and The Wire. Corrupt cops being chased down by not corrupt cops.

The last two episodes of this season of Call the Midwife were really exciting! I finished Killing Eve. A quirky show. Not quite sure what I think about the way it ended. Similarly, I have a lot of thoughts about the way Ozark wrapped up. Certain things seemed staged to appeal to the audience rather than to serve the story. I won’t say more here, but I’d love to discuss it with someone!

We enjoyed the last episodes of Picard and the first of Strange New Worlds. I’m also into Barry S3 and we’ll probably dip into Hacks S2 soon. Also on my radar: Russian Doll, The Lincoln Lawyer and Bosch: Legacy.

During my interview with David Agranoff, a Philip K. Dick expert, I confessed that I’d never seen Blade Runner. That situation has been rectified—we watched the Director’s Edition last weekend. It was pretty good but I’m not sure why it has been elevated to the status its achieved. Maybe I was watching it with its reputation in the back of my mind and it had a lot to live up to. Maybe I should have watched the version with the narration. I have no idea why people think there’s a chance Deckert was a replicant.

We also watched The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Toby Jones and Olivia Colman (as the narrator). It’s the biopic of a Victorian guy who became briefly famous for his drawings of cats. Charming and quirky.

I have an unaccustomed Friday evening to myself and I was thinking about signing up to Peacock for a month to watch Firestarter, but after seeing the barrage of negative reviews, I think I’ll watch something else instead. The Lincoln Lawyer, maybe. If nothing else, the “fire” metaphors reviewers are using to pillory the film are entertaining.

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On the road again

For the first time since July 2019 (when I went to NECON), I boarded an airplane. I can’t say it’s the first time I was at an airport since then because I had to make a few trips to pick people up and drop others off last summer. On those occasions, though, I only made it inside the terminal once, and even then it was for less than a minute.

My wife and I flew to SFO to spend Easter with our daughter and her family, which includes our two grandchildren, none of whom we’d seen since last October. Since we’ve been staying out of the public for most of the pandemic, it felt a little unsettling to be among so many people, especially bottled up with a couple of hundred of them on an airplane. Flight or Fright, indeed. I was hoping we wouldn’t encounter one of those jerks who insist on causing a disruption, thereby delaying our flight, but that didn’t happen. People were pretty much compliant, except for the guy on the return flight who stared at Fox News on his inflight monitor as if he were a character from Clockwork Orange with his eyes held open the whole flight. His mask was under his chin for much of the flight, and no one gave him any grief for it. I’d like to blame him for the cold I caught, but that was probably courtesy of my grandson, who was sniffling and coughing the morning we left.

It was good to get away and visit family, though. Breathe some fresh northern California air. Our daughter lives a little inland from San Francisco and Berkeley, so we were able to do a little hiking in the fields and hills nearby. Mostly, though, we conjured up meals, played cards and other games, played with the grandkids and visited.

Recent short story acceptance: “Something Strange” will appear in the Bouchercon anthology, to be published in September.

Coming soon:

  • “Kane’s Theory” will appear in Low Down Dirty Vote, Volume III: The Color of My Vote in May
  • “Date Night” will be in Picnic in the Graveyard from Cemetery Gates Media
  • “Kane’s Alibi” will be in The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories in July
  • “Double Play” will be in Summer Bludgeon: An Unsettling Reads Anthology, appropriately enough, this summer

My rewatch of The Shield continues. I just started season five. I’m also watching the final season of Better Call Saul, which is as good as ever. I enjoyed Hugh Laurie’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? I hope he does more like this. I have only two episodes left of the final season of Killing Eve.

The best thing I’ve seen lately, though, is Severance, which turned out to be quite different from what I expected. Best seen knowing very little about it, other than the fact that it has Christopher Walken in a supporting role, as well as John Turturro and Patricia Arquette. Britt Lower is a standout, and the final episode of the first season is a case study in creating suspense. I was shaking when it was over and I can’t wait for season two.

We watched the director’s edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and then the first two TNG movies. The only other film we’ve watched recently—one that I hesitate to even mention—is The Bubble, which was not very good at all. Only a copious amount of wine got us to the end.

I finished Corrections in Ink: A Memoir by Keri Blakinger on the return flight. Ms Blakinger was a reporter for the Houston Chronicle who first came to my attention when she covered a chemical factory fire in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. I’ve been following her reporting ever since, mostly having to do with prison issues. She knows whereof she writes, having spent some time in prison herself, which is mostly what this book is about—how she ended up there, what she experienced and how she turned things around afterward. I’m tempted to call it “Orange Is the New Blakinger,” but it stands on its own, even though she herself mentions the book OITNB a couple of times.

We also finished Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult, a full-on pandemic novel that has an interesting twist. We liked her writing enough that I grabbed another one, so we are now in the beginning pages of Vanishing Acts, where the twist is revealed early on.

I have a couple of podcast interviews lined up in the near future, so stay tuned for links to those when they’re done and posted. I expect there’ll be more of them as the publication date for Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of his Work, Life and Influences draws nigh.

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