Best Reads of 2014: Comic Books Written by Mark Waid

Daredevil Vol. 3, issue # 1 cover art by Paolo Rivera.

For once in comics, the art inside marches the

art on the outside, faithful readers.

Anything written by Mark Waid, but particularly Daredevil: The Man Without Fear!

Having read Mark Waid for some time, I must say that his run on Daredevil: The Man Without Fear! is consistently surprising, fun, with punchy dialogue, superb art, and character development in the Matt Murdock department. I also sampled the Indestructible Hulk and found the same. Waid, having cut his teeth on The Flash and Justice League over 10 years ago, and having penned the landmark series, Kingdom Come, has always possessed a solid grasp of the characters he writes. Moreover, he also takes dares (if you will pardon the pun) such as introducing sci-fi elements into Daredevil that ultimately pay off. Without exaggeration, Mark Waid is a master at his craft. The series is damn fun. Matt Murdock dates the assistant district attorney who tries get him to admit he is Daredevil. Horn-head even fights the Stilt Man, The Spot, stands up to four major sinister crime syndicates, and is, well, whimsical. Contributing artists who join in the fun include Paolo Rivera, Chris Samnee, Mike Allred, Khoi Pham, and Marco Checchetto.

Artist Chris Samnee apparently had much fun rendering this depiction

of assistant D.A. Kirsten McDuffie trying to get Matt Murdock

to admit he is Daredevil.
I had fun reading it, too.

My Best Reads of 2014: Fiction

Motherless Child

Glen Hirshberg

Tor Books Reprint Edition, May 2014

Originally published by Earthling Publications, Halloween, 2012

Glen Hirshberg let me down for the first time. He told me, a few years back, that he couldn’t help himself—he was writing a vampire novel that he feared was mediocre. Well, ol’ Artie lied to me. Or his fears were unfounded. Either way, mediocre, Motherless Child is not. In the novel, Natalie and Sophie, two young mothers, discover their new found vampirism, abandon their lives, and journey across the Deep South. The inherent and pervasive nihilistic sense of dread throughout the story recalls Anne Rice’s early vampire novels, with dashes of  influence from the film Near Dark (as Sean Moreland said) and a molten emotional core.

Watch How We Walk

Jennifer LoveGrove

ECW Press, October 2013

Toronto’s LoveGrove plays with time, switching from the protagonist’s upbringing in a dysfunctional Jehovah’s Witness family to her present day quest for her lost sister. The young Emilly's family unit consists of her rebellious older sister, Lenora, her alcoholic mother, and a father who also has a monkey on his back—an ambition to rise in the ranks of the Watchtower Society. Watch How We Walk hits hard, and often with agonizing accuracy, showing how the Jehovah's Witness religion breaks up friendships, families and communities. It even includes a gay uncle, allowing LoveGrove to show how an entire Kingdom Hall can turn against a queer congregation member and cast them out.

What Happened Later: A Novel

Ray Robertson

Thomas Allen Publishers, August 2007

Also a Toronto author, Robertson also plays with time and italicized dialogue. He switches from the hero’s youth —Ray's youth—and infatuation with Jim Morrison and quest for Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road, to Jack in his post-On-the-Road days of desultory deepening alcoholism. Who cares if the young hero doesn’t just order a copy of the legendary book (Robertson alludes to this lack of wisdom) and that the youthful, heady passages lack much in plot? So did On the Road. The passages involving Jack are cadent, rhythmic flights of language that are pitch-perfect and well-researched. I oughtta’ know.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Michael Chabon

Paperback Edition, Harper Perennial, July 2005

Hardcover published by William Morrow and Company, New York, 1988

I have read Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Telegraph Avenue, the former of which I consider a dazzling gem. However, both novels demonstrate his talent and genius. For me, Mysteries reaffirms Chabon’s genius. He takes the simple post-college journey of protagonist Art Bechstein, dating a woman but longing for Arthur, an attractive and wealthy fellow his age, transforming it into an epic journey of emotional and sexual growth. Erudite, funny, and with a weaker ending (sometimes the reader doesn’t like the end of the road...), Mysteries is breathtaking. I was simultaneously awed. . .and envious.

Wild Fell

Michael Rowe

ChiZine Publications, December 2013

Rowe, a Toronto scribe as well, goes gothic in his second book. Jameson Browning leaves his father, suffering from Alzheimer's, in a seniors' home, and purchases an estate to start life anew. The gothic horror abounds in the abandoned northern Ontario estate on Blackmore Island, but also continues in Ottawa, Canada. Jameson narrates this daring second-person tale that kicks you in the soul on the last page. This is a ghost story, but some of the ghosts lurk in Jameson's past, one troubled by child abuse and by the ambiguity of a narrator who may not be reliable. Rowe also dapples with playing with the past and present. What is it with these fine Canadian authors and toying with time?  This is a fine and leaner follow up to Mr. Rowe’s first horror novel, Enter, Night.

Best Reads of 2014: Comic Books - Joe Hill's Locke & Key

To kick off my favourite reads of 2014, I am starting with comic books, the Locke & Key series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, now collected in six beautiful trade paperbacks.

The short version

The fabulous Kinsey, older brother Locke, and their younger brother, Bode.

It's a great, immersing series. Three siblings, Locke, Kinsey and their baby brother, Bode, along with their grieving and self-medicating mother, move back to Keyhouse in Lovecraft, New England. The kids  soon discover that the residence contains magical keys that can open to doors to other places, or erase memories or do other fantastical things. They must defend themselves and the keys against a demon bent on acquiring them and letting loose more badness into the world. Their daily life is imperilled in horrible and fantastical ways.

Niggly details

Admittedly, Hill doesn’t know much about hockey—a subplot features an entire hockey team sporting Jason-Voorhees-style goalie masks. The story is also a little reminiscent of weekly TV episodes in places, with intense inter-familial going-ons.  Other critics have complained that the series starts slow, but it's all set-up for  later pay-off. Patience, kiddies.

What I like

That said, Rodriguez’s highly stylized art is gorgeous, their use use of panels is innovative (splash page, background, side bar—you name it), and Hill merrily chugs the plot along with well-defined, imperfect characters. There are also plentiful nods to 1980's pop culture and horror icons, predominantly H. P. Lovecraft mythos.

Hill presents an intergenerational struggle against evil, with plentiful flashbacks (His dad loves doing that, too, coincidentally, but Hill is damn good at it, too.). Hill has a fondness for bonding characters when they are kids, as King does in IT. And Hill also throws in a life-altering event in their youth; however, have no worries, there is no orgiastic plot point as there was in King’s IT. This flashback-and-old-evil-and-intergenerational storytelling is layered, a la Sandman (by Neil Gaiman) and thoroughly immersing.

I’ve read Hill’s story, “My Father’s Mask”, also about a disturbed family and young hero, and I must say that I like what he does. However, by entering the comic book medium, he is doing the King storytelling tradition one better. While Stephen King has adapted many works for comic books, Hill created this baby.

And this baby deserves a second read—a rarity for someone with my tight schedule.

Sean Moreland publishes in Black Treacle Magazine

I got some great news from a colleague recently, but could not reveal it until now. The inestimable Sean Moreland has published a horror story "Moth Belly Blues", in Black Treacle Magazine's eighth volume, along with weird, wonderful work by David Annandale and J.M. Reynolds. You can download it, free, here, at the Black Treacle website. Mr. Moreland is Editor-in-Chief for Postscript to Darkness, an antho of weird horror fiction, but also a fellow member of my writers' group, The Little Workshop of Horrors. Congratulations, Mr. Moreland!

Town & Train available in Canada

Looking for a scary read, with interesting characters, and a great story?  My first horror novel, “Town & Train”, is now available to order in hard copy and kindle from amazon.ca!
http://amzn.to/1FJ6IhQ

My novel, Town & Train, is out!

As of now, I am officially a bona fide first-time novelist. My horror novel, Town & Train, is available on Amazon.com in all formats and Amazon.ca in kindle format. I owe a huge thanks to my publisher Steve Berman of Lethe Press, Matt Cresswell for his stunning design work, and Alex Jeffers for his razor-sharp, draconian copy-editing skills.

 

Here's what they're saying about Town & Train:

 

“A ticket to ride an antique train, mysterious dream visions and vanishing towns—these are the things that will set your heart racing in James K Moran's very welcome addition to small-town horror stories. Wondrously weird and eerily compelling, it is a knockout.”

—Jeffrey Round, author of the Lambda Award-winning Lake on the Mountain, the Dan Sharpe mystery series, and The Honey Locust

 

“Moran does an excellent job of conveying the desperation that drives people to seek salvation in the supernatural...”

—Publishers Weekly

 

“In his debut novel, a malevolent train controlled by a polite shape-shifting entity, threatens to seduce and destroy the small town of Brandon, Ontario. James K. Moran does a good job of establishing the town and its many characters...”

—Rue Morgue: Horror in Culture & Entertainment

 

Cover image copyright, Lethe Press, 2014.

Cover design by Matt Cresswell.

 

A train is coming.

This week, a train is coming. My first horror novel, Town & Train, is coming out from Lethe Press. There is so much in there from the 17-year-old who started the story, and much from the writer I am now. In between now and then, the new writer and the older writer have reached an understanding and brokered a deal to keep the dream alive.

Last-minute All Hallows' Eve reading

This is just a quick reminder that if anyone wants a last-minute Halloween read, my story "Drawing Out" appears in last fall's issue of Icarus, which is here. This spooky treat features a rarity - a Jehovah's Witness as the hero. When Esmerelda, an attractive young woman, appears at Frederich's doorstep on Halloween night, he must decide whether or not to help her. Then Tommy Brown shows up, a young boy with a talent for drawing and whose friends are in trouble. And, of course, on All Hallows' Eve, anything can happen...

I've got a pre-Halloween reading this Thursday, October 30 in Ottawa for Postscripts to Darkness. I'll be mentioning my first horror novel, "Town & Train", coming out in mere weeks - on November 8. I'll be in good company - speculative fiction writers Kate Heartfield, Robin Riopelle, and Ranylt Richildis.

It's leafy early October and I'm thrilled to announce my latest short story publication. Glitterwolf: Halloween, curated by the U.K.'s Matt Cresswell, is publishing "Burial Ground". I have good company, including Steve Berman and other great talents. My thanks go to Matt.

 

Here are the stunning different covers for the issue.

 

And here's the elevator pitch I am using for the short story collection I am packaging.

 

“Burial Ground” features Joshua Naticoke, a bona fide lawyer, trying to leave his past on the reservation behind by moving his family into Glenwood, an environmentally progressive neighbourhood. However, a new past impinges on his family’s shot at a new start. Joshua Naticoke must come through this terrifying spiritual crisis and finally define who he is—a sell-out, a respected lawyer, or a drinker and brawler of his younger days.

Ranylt Richildis answersThe Canadian Writers Blog Tour

This week, Ranylt Richildis, my co-member of the Little Workshop of Horrors writing group and fine Ottawa writer and editor, is on the Canadian Writers Blog Tour.  Check out her answers about her writing process at her blog, Roughen.

 

2014 has been good to Ranylt Richildis. She has published fiction in The Future Fire, Myths Inscribed, The Golden Key and other venues. Richildis also earned an honourable mention in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing for a wee tale called “Long After the Greeks.”

Canadian Writers Blog Tour Questions

Canadian Writers Blog Tour

Anita Dolman recently asked me to participate in the Canadian Writers Blog Tour. While the secret origin of the tour is shrouded in mystery, I am happy to participate. As Merilyn Simonds wrote on her blog, the premise is simple—each writer goes on “tour” for a week, posting their answers to a series of questions all at once or one at a time. I have opted for all at one time. At the end of the post, the touring writer (yours truly this fine week) offers links to the postings of previous scribes who have already been on the tour.

 

First Disclosure:  At this stage, it would be prudent to mention that I met Anita at a poetry-trading workshop at rob mclennan’s apartment back in December 2001. While we didn’t all meet again for some time as a group, Anita and I did, trading writing—poetry and fiction—about once a month for a year. Things seemed to have worked out since, as she is now my fair wife. An Ottawa-based writer, Anita’s poetry and fiction have appeared throughout Canada and the United States, including, most recently, fiction in On Spec Magazine: The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic, and non-fiction in Women In Clothes, from Blue Rider Press. A new chapbook of her poetry, Where No One Can See You, is forthcoming from Angel House Press this fall.

 

These are the questions:

1. What are you currently working on?

2. How does your work differ from others?

3. Why do you write what you do?

4. How does your process work?

 

1. What are you currently working on?

I am wrapping up the last details for my first horror novel, Town & Train, due out Nov. 8, 2014, from Lethe Press. By "wrapping up" I mean looking at the baby and passing it off to my publisher and learning to let go. This dream of 20 years—to have the book published—is coming to fruition. I am having a considerable—and I hope understandable—amount of separation anxiety. Luckily, Steve Berman, my publisher, has been kind enough to walk me through the process of getting a first book out. I thank him for it.

 

Other than that, I have absolutely nothing in the tank. But, in all seriousness, I am finishing up rewriting some short stories so that I can package them as my first prospective short story collection.

 

As well, I have really turned onto the idea of the e-interview recently. I have taken my interview notes from my journalistic articles and published the whole thing whole-hog on my blog or other places. I’ve done this with my interviews for Toronto author Jeffrey Round and with Michael Rowe on the Postscripts to Darkness website. I have one interview in the pipe that I will post in the near future, with Ottawa author 'Nathan Burgoine, and another e-interview later on. I won’t reveal the author except to say they wrote a moving book about a little girl growing up as Jehovah’s Witness in a dysfunctional family.

 

2. How does your work differ from others?

I went through this thing in my twenties, where I wrote using acceptable horror, sci-fi, and fantasy tropes, until I had an epiphany. A story—any story—is about the character’s journey, both internal and external. When I hit upon that gold, I changed how I wrote, and I didn’t look back. Don’t’ get me wrong—I still adore monsters and fantastical stories and trying to pin down angst and struggles about life itself. I just realized that, in playing with words, I was very much like the little boy I once was, playing with action figures or toys, or making drawings. The difference is that, as a 41-year-old relating to his bursting-with-imagination-younger-self, my stories are ultimately about people. In some ways, I hope what I write is an extension of what Ray Bradbury would be writing were he still alive and writing today.

 

I dig writing about people’s journeys. Are they religious and having a change of heart? Are they ‘"straight" and reconsidering how they see themselves sexually? Are they cowardly, or so they think, and do they want to be courageous? To me, whether I am writing about a character agonizing about her love affair while taking a Voyageur bus bound for Cornwall or a Canadian backpacker in Ireland encountering a shape-shifter or a husband secretly trying to be writer while his wife thinks he is having an affair, I am writing about how we, as people, can change, or not.

 

In my poetry, I have new peccadilloes—writing about a child’s perspective versus a grown-up’s; life as it is as opposed to how we idealize it; and narrator perspectives we may not have considered.

 

In both poetry and fiction, however, I am also preoccupied with characters coping with loss—of the past, of loved ones, of a part of themselves. This theme, I notice, has surfaced in my work across the board. And an un-closeted honesty, which I never had until recently, is also coming through. I also owe this rawness to my own recent coming out, which has freed parts of me that weren’t necessarily as free before, creatively speaking.

3. Why do you write what you do?

I write to be read. Since as long as I can remember, I have longed to connect with others, and writing is a way to do this. At the very least, I hope my writing provides a doorway into another world, a shift into another perspective, or a reprieve from the everyday. At its best, and I think all aspiring writers feel this way, I hope that my writing can reach someone. Stephen King once wrote that you cannot sweep others away with the power of your writing until you have been swept away by the powers of an author yourself. I agree. And, in sweeping away a reader, I have the highest hope that they will learn something, that something might change in their heart or their viewpoint. One hesitates to say “in their life” but that happens, too.

4. How does your process work?

I’d have to agree with Anita about reading.  I read voraciously. For a while, I was fitting my reading time into my freelance journalism and reading only what I wanted, reviewing it, and/or interviewing the authors. What a gift that is. Unfortunately, with my time being limited, I am on hiatus from freelancing to focus more on my own writing. So, I’m reading even more of what I want. My current sizeable inspiration is Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which is quite good in a Catcher-in-the-Rye, Great-Gatsby-sort-of-greatness way. Chabon reminds me why I got into writing in the first place.

 

In between finishing up my novel and short stories, I have other ideas aging and percolating and jostling for attention. Where to start? And where to finish? I write my ideas down, both in hard copy and on hard drive. Whenever I sit down to write, and I dare complain that I don’t know what to write, I look at my list of ideas. Pick one, I tell myself. Usually I gravitate to the idea that moves me most. Look, the backyard is overgrown with weeds and greenery, but the grape vines look beautiful and the trees lush with leaves. I think I’ll tackle my idea about a heroine who is afraid of being outdoors because she thinks a serial killer may be out there in the woods. Is there a serial killer, though? And then I find out.

 

I used to draft a piece once or twice and then read it at the Tree Reading Series or proudly hand it to Anita for our then-writing trade. I learned to revise more extensively. I once handed her a Halloween poem printed on orange eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper. She gave the piece the what-for, and when she handed it back she said, not unkindly, “Put this in a drawer to remind yourself how not to write a poem.”

 

And I did. And you know what? I do pull that poem out sometimes to remember how not to write a poem.

 

Now I edit a story many times before it’s ready. Unless an idea comes out excavated, beautiful and practically whole, and I need not shape a piece into what it is meant to be, or to excavate its true self. This can be a rare instance, admittedly.

 

I have stories and poetry in the station at three different stages—drafted, needing revision, or needing to be launched from the train station into the world. I run a writing workshop, Little Workshop of Horrors, where my middle-or-earlier drafts go, to help carve them into the shape they are meant to be.

 

Then, of course, there’s the marketing stage—finding publishing markets, submitting, re-submitting, following up and querying. But that’s the business side. I let the other side of my brain tend to that, as suggested by Dorothea Brande in Becoming a Writer. That’s the business person’s job, not the artist’s, whose job is to create.

 

 

Next up on the Canadian Writers Blog Tour, I nominate Ranylt Richildis, a fine writer, editor, film reviewer and literature scholar living in Ottawa, Canada. After publishing a short story in Postscripts to Darkness, she was invited onboard as co-editor with fellow Fiction of Horror professors Sean Moreland and Aalya Ahmad. She also recently founded Lackington's, a new online SFF magazine devoted to stories told in unusual or poetic language. Richildis has had a good 2014, publishing fiction in The Future Fire, Myths Inscribed, The Golden Key and other venues. She has a few homemade scarves, and many elaborate dinner parties under her belt as well. Richildis also earned an honourable mention in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing for a wee tale called “Long After the Greeks.”

 

Closing Disclosure: Amanda Earl nominated Anita Dolman. I met Amanda Earl way back when she and her husband Charles were starting up Bywords Quarterly Journal, now simply known as bywords.ca. In my modest way, I offered them grant-seeking suggestions whilst they bought me a meal and a pint at the real Royal Oak Pub. Years later, Amanda is doing some marvellous work, not only in her own writing, but also through bywords.ca and her small press, Angel House Press. In addition, I admire Amanda for suggesting that we not all have to live the same way. Some of us have monogamous relationships, and some of us don’t. Some of the populace thinks the populace is mostly straight—and much of the populace, as I have discovered particularly in the last year or so, is most certainly not straight. And that is a wonderful discovery. 

About On Spec, Canadian source of horror, sci-fi and fantasy fiction

Dear reader, what do you mean you haven't heard of On Spec? Well, then, allow me to enlighten you.

 

On Spec: the canadian magazine of the fantastic is a haven of great Canadian-written speculative fiction. That is, since 1989, its founders, The Copper Pig Writers Society, have published the best Canuck horror, sci-fi and fantasy writing.

 

On Spec is a respected, pro-paying market where many struggling Canadian authors have gotten their big break in the publishing business. On Spec's mandate? To "discover and showcase quality works by predominantly Canadian writers and artists, in the genre we call “Fantastic” literature." However, they do publish non-Canadian works as well.

 

My big break was publishing a little sci-fi story called "Living Under the Conditions" in number 69 , Summer 2007 Vol. 19 No. 2. You can buy it here by scrolling down to issue 19. My little story went on to be nominated for the prestigious Journey Prize.

 

To summarize, On Spec is worth reading, subscribing to here, or trying to get published in. Check it out!

Anita Dolman publishes in On Spec

Anita Dolman, me fair wife, has published her first - and first attempt at - speculative fiction in On Spec: the canadian magazine of the fantastic. Congrats! Her story, "Handcrafting", appears in the summer 2014 issue.

Anita Dolman chapbook with Angel House Press

Just a quick note to say that  Anita Dolman, me fair wife, will be publishing her chapbook of poetry this fall with Angel House Press. Angel House Press publishes "ragged edges, raw talent and rule breakers."

 

And that would make this a good day to open up a bottle of something!

Published in the UK!



Well, what news for the first day back to school. I have been published in the UK for the first time. The first issue of Chase The Moon: The Magazine of Misfit Stories, edited by Matt Cresswell, has published my short story, "Wild Eyes".

 

My piece about a Canadian backpacker in Ireland, whose pub travels take a turn for the weird, is one of the 15 debut stories.

 

While Chase The Moon is for sale, the editor is also giving one free story away as a promo. Follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/p9333jc

 

Many thanks to editor Matt Cresswell, who also curates the superb Glitterwolf Magazine, for publishing my story, "Wild Eyes". I am pleased that my little misanthropic story has found a home finally.

Thank you, Ranylt for mentioning Clive Barker "In the Hills, the Cities"

This is a shout-out to Ranylt Richildis of my Little Workshop of Horrors group. I informed her how I recently had a editor reject a short story - they complained the character is ruminating too much in the beginning of the piece. Well, of course they are ruminating - they are driving to Cornwall for a friend's funeral, for cryin' out loud. In high praise, Ranylt told me the piece, with its travel and then fantastical tone (I added these last two bits, assuming she meant this), reminded her of Clive Barker's "In the Hills, the Cities", which appeared in volume one of Books of Blood. "In the Hills, the Cities" is an absolutely gorgeous story that I stumbled across in high school, while working part-time at Harvey's (for the non-Canadians, this is a fast-food chain). The story knocked me and my teenage sensibilities back- it featured a male gay couple, a weird fantastic premise, and travel. I thought 'You can do this? You can do this with a short story? Yes. You can do this. Thank you, Clive.'

And now - thank you, Ranylt.

Finding Michael Rowe in Northern Frights 3

In my Ontario travels to used bookstores in Prescott and Gananoque, I have spied familiar names. Hello, Jeffrey Round, scribe of The P-Town Murders and Michael V. Smith, author of Cumberland. And I found the jewel I did not own (and now do), the gently used 1995 edition of Mosaic Press' Northern Frights 3 edited by Don Hutchison. Volume three of Northern Frights, a potpourri of Canadian horror and dark fantasy, features  'Wild Things Live There', the first published short horror fiction by Toronto author Michael Rowe. What a find.

Reading and reviewing Ray Bradbury Unbound

It's only fitting that I am holing myself up in the public library on these rainy summer afternoons to review Jonathan R. Eller's Ray Bradbury Unbound for an upcoming issue of Rue Morgue Magazine. Unbound, due out this Sept., is the sequel to Professor Eller's first—and astonishingly well-executed—Ray Bradbury biography, Becoming Ray Bradbury. Ray often did the same thing I am doing. As a kid, he spent the summers of his formative years reading, reading, reading.

E-interview with Michael Rowe online at Postscripts

My online interview with the eloquent Toronto editor and horror writer Michael Rowe is now up at the Postscripts to Darkness website. I talk to Mr. Rowe about his latest horror novel, the soul-kicking Wild Fell, as well his various inspirations and themes. Check this out to see how the pros do it - both the interview and the question-answering.

My Book Arrived in the Mail

Guess what arrived in the mail from my publisher on Monday? The advance uncorrected proofs of "Town & Train". For those not in the business, these are the advance copies that get sent to book reviewers and the media in general. I also have to give the book one last look before it goes to press for the Nov. 8 publication date. I got a little light-headed about seeing the books after I opened the box. I owe a huge thank you to my publisher and editor, Steve Berman, and to Matt Cresswell for his amazing design work.