Paul D. Brazill

Guest Blogger: Matt Dukes Jordan - Hollywood Zombified The World.

2009-12-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Zombified the World!

by Matt Dukes Jordan

In Hollywood the line between the living and the dead is permeable and many screenwriters exist in a zombified state, souls long gone, boney fingers tapping on keyboards as if guided by some unseen force, cranking out screenplays about zombies, something they know well.

Guys like John Fante, Jim Thompson, and Horace McCoy are good examples of cool novelists turned into Hollywood zombies. Booze, bad times, and producers stole their souls. Finally, a sense of artistic waste washed over them like listless waves carrying spent condoms sloshing ashore on the sands beneath the Santa Monica pier, dazzling lights spinning in the dark above.

Everyone’s favorite Hollywood zombie-writer is a fictional character in a film, a poor sap who ended up face down in a swimming pool. It’s not often that films are narrated by dead men, but in Sunset Boulevard, a zombified screenwriter tells the tale of how his last drops of precious bodily fluid had been drained by the flashy fangs of a zombie-vampire Hollywood actress demanding yet another rewrite. The next stop was a coffin shared with a dead pet monkey.

Billy Wilder co-wrote and directed Sunset Boulevard, which some argue is a horror film, not a film noir, and he also directed Double Indemnity, a true classic noir. Not one but two great writers contributed to the final product on that film, though one of them felt the other’s prose had a bad odor. Screenwriter Raymond Chandler, a brilliant but somewhat fussy man, wrote in a 1942 letter to the wife of his publisher, Alfred K. Knopf: “….Hammett is all right. I give him everything…. But James Cain – faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat…. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way. Nothing hard and clean and cold and ventilated.”

Hard, clean, cold, and ventilated is not what zombies like. They prefer stuffy, stinky, hot basements and box canyons where they can corner you. L.A. inspires tales of seediness and collapse because it’s a smelly, brutal, unventilated place where the air is only cold and clean way out over the ocean—offshore.

Writers tend to be thoughtful, quiet, reserved sorts, but L.A. is great for loud hustlers. You gotta be tough, fast, and vicious; and willing to suck ideas from the brains of writers and claim them for your own. It’s a city of mirrors, and illusions, and lies, where the best bullshitter wins if he doesn’t lose himself the way Chaplin does in the film The Circus when he runs into a funhouse room full of mirrors. (Welles used the same imagery in the super-sleazy noir, The Lady from Shanghai.) To make it, many have to be willing to hustle and steal like Sammy Glick does, lead character in What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg.

Oh, and don’t try to laugh Hollywood away once it’s zombified you. It’s the city where Jim Belushi died of an overdose in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont while in the midst of writing a screenplay for a film he was calling Noble Rot; where Richard Pryor caught on fire while freebasing; where Fatty Arbuckle worked as a director under another name after his career was ruined by a false accusation of murder; where Chaplin went through a miserable divorce from his teen bride Lita in which her lawyers did all they could to destroy his character.

The Los Angeles resident Aldous Huxley predicted a brave new world in which a wonder drug called Soma will make everyone zombie-like but mellow. Turns out that blockbuster film spectacles are Soma for the masses. Everyone is put to sleep by the razzle-dazzle of a thousand CGI deaths that sooth the savage souls of the zombies in the audience, all chuckling at decapitations, auto crashes, and exploding blood packs.

Literature is all about the importance of the individual soul, something zombies lack. Yet even great writers like Burroughs and Borges and Baudrillard say that in the labyrinth of the garden of forking paths of the book of sand of simulations of reality there is no reality, no soul, no individual-- only the map, the simulation, the replica, the replicant. L.A. is where many thousands of people are engaged in creating seductive and entertaining simulations about zombies and replicants shuffling around, hungry for brains and souls. It’s a metaphor for real life in the modern world. It’s also a metaphor or working in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

The odd thing is, the more sleazy and horrific the whole thing is, the better the films about the place are. Here are some wonderful dark visions of L.A.: Chinatown by Roman Polanski, Collateral by Michael Mann, Day of the Locust by John Schlesinger, The Big Lebowski by the Coen brothers, Ed Wood by Tim Burton, Mulholland Drive by David Lynch, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie by John Cassavetes, Pulp Fiction by Tarantino, Boogie Nights by Paul Thomas Anderson, Short Cuts by Robert Altman, and Bladerunner by Ridley Scott.

Los Angeles is bulldozed at night so a new movie set can replace it by dawn. You can run from your fate as a zombie but you can’t hide from the fake reality that L.A. has created for you that has replaced your own life by infiltrating your dreams, taking over your imagination. Don’t fight it, surrender. You’ll feel so much better once you’ve lost your soul and begun shuffling toward the cineplex or your computer keyboard, thinking only of zombies and longing for brains.

Bio: Matt Dukes Jordan is the author of a forthcoming novel called Dance, Hollywood Monkey, Dance, written with his fictional cohort, Ron Jon Bone. Jordan is also the author of Bukowski’s L.A., 2008, and Weirdo Deluxe, 2005. His book Weirdo Noir is due out in the fall of 2010. His short story Sunset Boulevard Escort Services can be found in the brand-new anthology of LA fiction, Sleeping with Snakes: Notes from the Los Angeles Underbelly. He shows art at Hyaena gallery (see Hyaenagallery.com). He’s lurked around L.A. on and off since 1990. He has also lived in London, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Key West, and various other places.

PULP METAL MAGAZINE - New Fiction &New Post From Me

2009-12-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

Over at Pulp Metal Magazine there is new fiction from Frank Duffy, Jodi MacArthur and more PLUS a new post in my I DIDN'T SAY THAT, DID I? column. Click here: http://pulpmetalmagazine.webs.com/apps/blog/

Late Night Film at disenthralled

2009-12-15T00:36:00.000-08:00

Walter Conley's amazing disenthralled is out again with some great prose and photos from Alisa Rynay Haller
R o b e r t C r i s m a n
Lynn Kinsey
M i s s A l i s t e r
Howie Good
Tom Leins
C K B l a c k
Richard Godwin
L e n a V a n e l s l a n d e r. I've a story there too:Late Night Film. It's here: http://disenthrallme.wordpress.com/issues/issue-3/

When The Snowman Brings The Snow at Thrillers Killers n Chillers

2009-12-14T15:19:00.000-08:00

I've another Xmas story -WHEN THE SNOWMAN BRINGS THE SNOW - over at THRILLERS KILLERS n CHILLERS. Have a gander: http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com/2009/12/when-snowman-brings-snow-by-paul-d.html

The Steve Weddle Memorial Airport Flash Fiction Challenge

2009-12-14T00:33:00.000-08:00

The Steve Weddle Memorial Airport Flash Fiction Challenge

Details of the challenge are here:
http://danielboshea.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/the-steve-weddle-memorial-airport-flash-fiction-challenge/
The challenge was to write a Flash Fiction story featuring an airport. I struggled but this is what I came up with.

Warsaw Dawn by Paul D. Brazill

The men in the long black overcoats looked like shadows as they cut through the snow smothered square. A ghostly spiral of smoke drifted up from the husk of the burnt out car as Darko fell to his knees, the low hum that hovered in the distance growing louder.He looked up, gasping, as the plane roared overhead. His fingers buzzed and tingled and the sensation spread through his hands and up his arms. The weight of an elephant was on his chest and he felt the cold hard metal against his forehead. Then the day dissolved into black.

The tall man hummed a misty melody as he poured the petrol over Darko’s blood splattered body and set it alight.

‘Get a move on, Marek ’ said the corpulent slug with the bullet hole eyes, who stood beside him. ‘He’ll have landed by now.’ The tall man picked up the briefcase and lit a cigarette on the flickering flames of Darko’s burning cadaver.

‘Take a chill pill, Arek,’ he said without cracking a smile, his accent as dark and thick as Irish coffee.

The airport was as bright as a migraine and Colin Graham shuffled to the front of the queue and picked up his suitcase. He was gasping for a drink and one of the reasons he was glad to be back in Poland was that he knew the airport bar would be open, even at this hour. He rushed through customs focused on the thought of a pint of Krolewskie and a shot of Bols when he saw them. Laurel and Hardy,Flip and Flap, Bolek and Lolek. They had a few nicknames, although no one ever said them to their faces. He knew them as Marek and Arek. Dragan’s boys. And he knew that they were a harbinger of a shit load of trouble.

Whenever Colin saw Dragan he was reminded of the picture of Dorian Grey. He’d been a journalist in Warsaw long enough to know that Dragan wasn’t known as The Psychotic Serb for nothing. But like Wilde’s hero there was no sign of corruption or suffering or sickness or guilt on Dragan’s angelic face. Colin knew that the Serbian was in his forties but his face was that of someone half that age. Unblemished apart from the small crescent shaped birth mark on his right cheek. Colin sipped his vodka and waited while Dragan and his goons examined the contents of a briefcase that was splashed with what he hoped was red paint.

Dragan nodded and said something in Russian to his henchmen who rushed out of the room. Colin spoke Russian but sometimes it was better not to know what was being said. Dragan looked up from the briefcase and turned on his 5000 watt smile.

‘My old friend, Colin,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye.
‘My English/Irish friend. How the fuck are you?’

He filled up Colin’s vodka glass and sat on the edge of the desk, swigging from the bottle.

‘Could be worse. Bit knackered.’

‘Long flight, eh?’

‘Six hours. Long enough.’

‘And how was the Big Apple?’

‘So good they named it twice. Beers like rat’s piss though.’

‘And did you see her? Colin shuffled in his chair. He shook his head.

‘Long gone, Dragan. Months ago.’ ‘And...’

‘Well, NYPD are looking for her. In connection with the murder of a mugger in Central Park but ...’

Dragan laughed.

‘Ah. That’s my girl. That’s my Krystyna’

His face went dark.

‘So?’

‘Back in Blighty as far as I know.’

Dragan nodded.

‘Scotland? With Banks?’

Colin shrugged his shoulders. There was a knock on the door. Dragan looked up at Marek and Arek. They had the look of scolded schoolboys. They mumbled in Russian but all Colin understood was that ‘the real one’ had been ‘burnt to a cinder’ in the back of the car. Dragan looked like Vesuvius ready to erupt. He took a large envelope from the top of the desk and handed it to Colin.

‘Later,’ he said. Colin didn’t argue. He picked up his coat and suitcase and left Dragn’s office as fast as he could.

The trendy bar in the New Town –which was actually older then the Old Town -was pricey but with the money Dragan had paid him - plus his money from Krystyna -Colin felt he could afford it. He sent one short message to the Facebook page know as Femme Fatale: He bought it and then closed his lap top. He lay back in the Zebra striped sofa and looked out outside as a horse and cart clip clopped past and wondered how long he should wait before he headed off to Scotland.

Guest Blogger: Carrie Clevenger - Reboot.

2009-12-12T06:23:00.000-08:00

Reboot

CARRIE CLEVENGER

The red subsided into darkness; a black muffled in between unseen cushions of dust and discontent. There was no pain, no want, or loss. There was only the staleness of contained air.

Silence. Sweet, blessed silence.

I resisted my coming-to, my conscious mind moaning and rolling over in sleep. I wanted nothing more than to chase away the morning sunlight. But there was no sun, no bed, no voice welcoming me back to awareness. There was only stillness and perfect, immaculate nothing.

Even nothing couldn’t describe what I saw when I opened my eyes. It was as if everything around me had simply dissipated, and all that was left was one tiny neuron, capable of bearing intelligent thought. Electricity. Cold.

My mind felt the freezing temperature but my skin registered no response. My eyes rolled dryly in their sockets, confused about being open or not. I had something behind my back. Hard. Yet soft.

My hand jerked. Slowly, it obeyed, coming to an abrupt halt as I considered my confinement for the first time. Satin, covering hard surface there. Slowly, my fingers tiptoed over the quilted fabric like blind salamanders in a cavern pool. I tested it with a push, and it did not move.

My feet revived suddenly and I kicked. More resistance. I was cold and contained. Here in this perfect, impenetrable dark, so complete that white snow danced in my vision as my eyes fought the first exposure to the only true darkness they’ve ever known.

A box. I was in a box. The thought filled my head. My ears were catching up to the rest of me and initiated their first complaint of silence. The low hum became a high rev of interior noise. The sound of my brain. The sound my fingers made as they nosed into the satin. I knew satin.

Satin, like my girl’s negligee.

Panic threaded into my system, and I realized that all of me was just now waking up, like an old computer booting up for the first time in months. A spark here, a current there, and I was on the loading screen.

Please wait…

My muscles jumped on their own, bumping my knees against the (lid of the) box. I frowned, both hands seeking my ceiling now. I was prone. I was on a cushion, thin as it was. Not exactly for sleeping. I think I knew where I was, but I didn’t want to try to rationalize just exactly how I’d been put into that situation.

A sound overhead. Distant but true, I wouldn’t mistake it in this bubble of absolute quiet. The scratching my fingers were doing, matched by something far away. Far but getting closer.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand out as my scalp crawled with the foreboding that shit was about to go awry once that sound reached me. The scrape-shuffle-scrape sound filtered down, through cottony stuffing and into my little private prison. I swallowed the desert back in my mouth and gritted my teeth, feebly attempting to quell the mania building in my brain. I couldn't wrap my head around this.

I'd lose it if I even tried.

Scrape

Shuffle.

Scrape.

A pause in the monotonic clockwork of it, and I was holding my breath. Mentally. I had nothing to breathe. My mind shuffled that thought back to priority 999 and continued motoring along.

Scrape.

Shuffle.

Scrrrraaaaape.

More silence. The din in my ears picked right up where they'd left off and I had the strangest image of standing in front of my tv with the channel set to three, before the screen started to turn blue and mute out...there was static. I blinked in the nothing. I was wearing socks, but not shoes.

My fingers were dried branches. My tongue was leather. I tried to speak, and once reassured that wasn't back to normal operating procedure, I let off stressing my system.

I wasn't fucking breathing.

The scrape-shuffle overhead, or underneath for all the fuck I knew, was replaced with a rapid digging. Like a dog. A big one. A weird DigdigDigdigDigdigDig noise, terrifying me more than the scrape-shuffle ever had.

I opened my hands and pressed them palms-up deep into the satin. I pushed. A creak.

DigdigDigdigDigdigDig...

It was getting closer now, and when I was at the breaking point, something struck the top of the coffin.

Coffin, yes. I was in A. Fucking. Coffin.

I screamed.

Bio: CARRIE CLEVENGER

Carrie Clevenger, (also known as Carrie Cleaver) worships Maynard and dreams of cephalopods on trains and other oddities in Austin, Texas. She doesn’t have to write the next great novel, but it’d be nice to at least leave a smear on the way down.

The hub of her evil network is here: http://shadowsinstone.blogspot.com/ or on Twitter @shadowsinstone.

Ray Banks is Guest Blogger at Needle Scratch Static

2009-12-11T07:17:00.000-08:00

The Rap Sheet and Crime Factory's Gordon Harries is back !

Over at Needle Scratch Static he has no less than Ray Banks as a guest blogger. Banks gives us a review of Cathy Unsworth's BAD PENNY BLUES which is getting more than a few hat tips from some pretty sharp people. Pop over and have a gander here: http://www.needlescratchstatic.com/2009/12/review-bad-penny-blues.html

Guest Blogger: Jim Wisneski - An Honest Hitman

2009-12-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

AN HONEST HITMAN by Jim Wisneski

Most hits were pretty easy. It wasn't like the movies or books where things get overly complicated. The only hard part was to get the person isolated so once they were shot you could leave the scene in normal fashion.

Oh, and always use just one bullet. This game of unloading a clip into a body is reckless and stupid. First, police will instantly know it was a hit and will go right for the spouse which was where half of Billy's hits came from. Second, it was a waste of ammo which costs money.

Billy's hits were so good he had never been questioned once. Even on the numerous times when the other spouse broke down and admited to hiring a hitman. It made Billy laugh when he tried to figure how many Adam Smith's or Jackie Jones's were in jail or being questioned for his murders.

Well, it wasn't murder. Not in Billy's eyes. It was a job. Just like if an executive of a big company steals another's idea or something.

Sitting in an old white Honda that he stole, Billy waited for his next victim to come out for a smoke break. Billy didn't know the persons name. He never knew their names. He didn't care. The only he cared about when getting the perfect shot. Depending on the request, Billy always aimed for the heart. Even liars and cheaters deserved an open casket in his opinion.

Billy checked his watch.

Three minutes to go.

Then he'd have the Honda returned within ten minutes and back home within thirty.

This case seemed pretty solid because the man he was going to kill had a lot of enemies. He was a defense attorney. He'd probably gotten rapists and murderers kept out of jail and all those victims families would be suspects.

But not Billy.

One minute to go.

Billy slid out the silenced weapon and prepared himself for the shot. Once the victim walked out of the building and to the right, a bullet would storm through his chest. Then Billy would duck down and wait a few minutes before starting the car and slowly driving away. Casual. It had to be casual.

Counting down the seconds, Billy heard a dog bark.

A beautiful golden lab stood on the corner and barked towards the car.

Billy made a kissing sound and clapped his hands and dog slowly walked towards him.

"Come on boy!" Billy yelled.

He laid the gun back on the seat. Part of this hit wasn't to kill a dog so he had to keep it out of the way and keep it from barking in his direction.

The dog trotted forward then stopped. It turned and moved back to the corner.

There was only twenty seconds left until the victim would cross at the corner of the alley.

"Wanna treat?" Billy yelled. "Come on."

The dog walked back. Once it got to the door of the car, it turned and ran again. Billy recognized these movements, the dog wanted to play.

"I can't play, I have to work," Billy said opening the door.

He slowly stepped out. He had ten seconds either grab the dog or chase it away and then get back in the car and shoot the victim. No matter what though, Billy couldn't let the dog get hurt.

Billy's foot touched the pavement and the dog came running towards him again. Eight seconds to go. Billy stood up and clapped his hands. The dog was at an arms length away. Six seconds to go. Billy turned to let the dog jump in the car and felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down and saw his shirt absorbing the blood at a fast rate. He looked around but everything became hazy. He saw the victim standing on the corner. Billy smiled and knew he still had a chance. Then he'd deal with his own bullet wound. He swallowed and reached into the Honda. Before his hand could touch the weapon he felt great deal of pressure on his head and heard the sound of his skull being crushed.

It was a second bullet wound. Thankfully for Billy it was the last he'd even encounter.

_

"Seven thousand," Barry said hanging a laptop case to a man.

"Do I need to count it?"

"No, I don't play those games. But hey, I wanted to ask about the dog, that was pure genius."

"Yea, I knew Billy. He thought he was the best. We were friends when we were kids. We wanted to grow up and be cowboys and fight bad guys. I remember going to his house. He had a golden lab. He loved the dog so much. Then one day it got hit by a car and had to be put to sleep. He never had another dog after that. But I knew he had a soft spot for dogs."

"Well, you sure do your homework. I can't believe it. I still can't believe my wife put a hit on me."

"I could take of her, if you want. I'll give you a returning discount."

"Eh, not today," Barry said waving his hand at the hitman. "I think it would be better to see her face when I come home tonight alive. See what she does. But I have your number."

"No you don't," the hitman said smiling. "The phone's been destroyed."

"Well, what If I need your information again?"

"I'll contact you soon."

"What about the dog?"

"I returned it back to the yard I stole it from."

"Boy you guys won't stop at anything will you?"

The hitman tapped the laptop case and smiled.

"Just another day at the office."

Barry stuck his out to shake the hitman's hand. The hitman shook his head and pointed behind Barry. Barry turned and threw his hands up half expecting the other hitman, Billy, to be there. Nobody was there. Barry turned back around and the hitman was gone.

Barry walked to his car faster than normal and checked over his shoulder every few seconds. He started his car with his eyes shut waiting for it to explode. It didn't. He smiled as he stood at the front door to his house knowing he did the right thing by hiring an honest hitman.

"Honey, I'm home!" he yelled walking through the door.

Short bio: Visit Jim's writers blog at www.writersnwriters.blogspot.com - visit his personal blog at www.wizworld.wordpress.com - and visit his podcasting blog to hear some of his stories, novellas, and novels at www.jimcast.wordpress.com. Jim writes short stories, novellas, novels, and poetry. . . and music. Listen to some of his new songs at www.1album1month.wordpress.com. When he isn't writing, he is thinking about writing.

Killer by Dave Zetlserman

2009-12-10T07:16:00.000-08:00

Killer by Dave Zeltserman

I don't have the skills to write proper reviews but I will say that Dave Zeltserman's KILLER is a cracking book.

I was lucky enough to get a proof copy from Serpents Tail and was as pleased as punch drunk.

Killer is the third in Zeltserman's 'bloke gets out of prison' trilogy and fans of the other two - Small Crimes & Pariah- won't be disappointed.

It grabs you by the lapels from the very start and proceeds to give you a good kicking, leaving you in a crumpled heap in the corner.

I think KILLER is out in January 2010 and it's well worth checking out.

Guest Blogger: Jason Michel - Post Apocalypse Now!

2009-12-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

Post-Apocalypse Now !

(A personal reflection on films for The End Of The World) by Jason Michel

The film “The Road” has just been released in France. It is the latest in a long line of films dubbed sweetly, “Post–Apocalypse”, and seen and classified by such people who classify such things as a kind of sub-genre of Horror or Sci-Fi, yet really they seem to occupy an odd place that is theirs and theirs alone. It is a place that starts with a barren and arid hope and often ends with even less.

It is a place that I can hang out in like Beatniks are drawn to a café full of black coffee.

I’ll tell you poor mortals why.

Now, your more famous Science Fiction Movie has had its fair share of big bucks scapegoating governmental propaganda in its history. The political influences know that people always want to see a bigger explosion. With Invasion Of The Body Snatchers in the 50s and War of the World’s supposed Anti-Commie message and Independence Day with its blatant scenes of Islamic Fundamentalists adding to the overall horror experienced by its “civilised” audience of a money leeching SFX extravaganza with a plot so simplistic that even a member of your average Reality TV show could have done better.

Horror tends to show us things that go bump in the night and taps into that irrational and unreasonable side of us that only really comes out in everyday life in our dreams or after four bottles of wine.

Post-Apocalyptica pops its scorched head up from time to time.

This is one of those times.

And its message has always been a lot more subversive than its first grizzled impression.

Charlton Heston was the 60s godfather of such films, before he became the gun wielding fiend that terrified liberals from California to Manhattan. Each of the characters he played came from the same basic mould; a tough world weary misanthrope angry at his species for their greed and stupidity, snarling and shouting so whenever the opportunity allowed. A hippie gone bad.

The threat of nuclear annihilation and the idea that humans were not the end all of the evolutionary process overshadowed Planet Of The Apes and its subsequent sequels.

The threat of the baby booming generation and humanity’s voracious appetite for breeding without control and to the detriment of all other species informed the classic Soylent Green.

Finally, The Omega Man showed us a world after the threat of biological weapons of mass destruction in the wake of The Vietnam War became a reality.

The Sixties also saw the rise of the most famous sub-genre of all Post-Apocalyptica. The zombie flick. Shuffling into our consciousness in 1968, George A Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead changed our perception of the zombie forever. Gone was the idea of Voodoo witchdoctors reanimating corpses to do their bidding. It was now replaced by something all the more insidious. A creeping mindless horde of undead cannibals. So influential was this film and its sequels that oodles has been written about them. From their satirical counter culture stance on the military and The Vietnam War in the form of the pompous General to their comment on our consumer society. To say that these films were mindless rubbish was really missing the point. They are a glorious modern day Grand Guignol.

The Mid-Seventies brought with it its own social upheaval and counter culture – Punk. Its chaotic battle cry of “Anarchy!” permeated throughout pop culture. Film was no exception and another great piece of Post Apocalyptica was George Miller’s 1979 feature, Mad Max and its sequel Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. In 2006, the co-scriptwriter James McCausland wrote in an article on peak oil, “George and I wrote the script based on the thesis that people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving and the assumption that nations would not consider the huge costs of providing infrastructure for alternative energy until it was too late”.

The Noughties have brought with them a slew of worthwhile efforts not seen since the Sixties, such as 28 Days Later, a film that added a new slant to the zombie movie and showed that normal humans are even more frightening than the infected that they are running from. This film also heralded a new wave of zombie flicks that continues today including a decent remake of Dawn Of The Dead and Romero’s own Land Of The Dead as well as the emergence of the Zombie Comedy with Shaun Of The Dead. Zombies have well and truly gone mainstream with even Channel 4 in England showing Charlie Brooker’s splendid Dead Set, a zombie story set in a reality TV show.

Another of note is the intelligent almost biblical Children Of Men with some fantastic action scenes and genuinely gritty sets, in a story concerning the worldwide infertility of women and the consequences on a species knowing it’s going to die.

We are now living in our own Sci-Fi world, with portable communication devices and a worldwide communication network. We have everything we want at our fingertips. Computers are everywhere and are so ingrained in our way of life that most are invisible. We can enter into virtual worlds of our own making and live out our fantasies however high or tawdry. Our species life expectancy is longer now than at any time in the past. We should be happy. But we’re not.

I see the Post-Apocalyptica all around me and I have to admit that I don’t feel that much hope for the future. Not to say that I am right. Or some kind of eco-avenger. I do my bit, don’t drive, don’t want kids. If there is any hope in all this it is a quote from the biologist Lynn Margulis, "Gaia Is a Tough Bitch". Nature will sneeze and off we tumble, but when Rome begins burning I’ll be on my veranda with a Strawberry Daiquiri, searching for my violin.

BIO:

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE Jason Michel has been turned on, tripped up and stumbled over all around the world on an eleven year (so far) self imposed exile. He is a hack purveyor of penny dreadfuls and flash nightmares of daytime who now lives in France. He has recently published his first novel “Confessions of a Black Dog” and short story collection "The Wrong Mind And Other Fictions" at lulu.com and has had work published in various print and online magazines.

His work can be found at:

http://beatendog.blogspot.com/

He has just set up a new magazine that is looking for submissions that he describes as "A heady smorgasbord of odd fiction, cult celluloid, unreal doodling, lowbrow waffle & heavy, heavy music". The website can be found here:

http://pulpmetalmagazine.webs.com/

I didn't say that, did I? at PULP METAL MAGAZINE

2009-12-09T00:56:00.000-08:00

Over at PULP METAL MAGAZINE I have a regular column, I DIDN'T SAT THAT, DID I?

Pop over there now and see me rambling on about Robert Mitchum and the Leeds Futurama Festival. http://pulpmetalmagazine.webs.com/apps/blog/

Also, if you look in the fiction section you'll find two of my short shorts: SNAP, CRACKLE&POP and THE GOODBYE KISS. And lots of good stuff from some talented people, too. http://pulpmetalmagazine.webs.com/fiction.htm

PULP METAL MAGAZINE is LIVE!

2009-12-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

Pushcart Prize nominee Jason Michel has a new ezine: PULP METAL MAGAZINE.He describes it as

"A heady smorgasbord of odd fiction, cult celluloid, unreal doodling, lowbrow waffle & heavy, heavy music"

The first issue is up now with fiction from Steve Jensen, Melanie Brown, me and others.;art by Jason, Jodi Mac Arthur and Kristin Fouquet;my regular column 'I DIDN'T SAY THAT, DID I?' and much, much more. Take a gander here: http://pulpmetalmagazine.webs.com/

Guest Blogger: Laura Eno - Tis The Season

2009-12-08T01:54:00.000-08:00

Tis the Season

Three days until Christmas. What was so jolly about it? Marcy slumped in the bus seat, trying to ignore all of the excited shoppers around her. Hard to do, since they banged their purchases into her shins as they made their way down the aisle.

She shouldn’t be on the bus anyway. Mr. Ho-ho-ho had taken their only car – again – to do some Christmas shopping. Or so he said. Marcy knew he’d been siphoning money for months. He’d told her that he’d had to take a pay cut at work, but she knew better. By her estimate, about $10,000 dollars had disappeared so far. He’d borrowed the car more lately as well, using this or that excuse so that he wasn’t available when she got off work.

She stared out the window, trying not to notice the festive lights wrapped around every lamppost. The bus route took her through the seedier section of downtown, past the strip joints tucked away in little shopping centers. Marcy spotted her car parked right in front of one of them, her husband standing on the sidewalk talking to a woman with long blonde hair. He gave her a hug just as the bus drove by.

Marcy seethed with anger, humiliation settled deep in her soul. Divorce would be too good for him. What was she, some five-year throwaway? Toss the frowsy brunette with the few extra pounds for a leggy blonde? No way. Not going to happen.

One of her coworkers often talked about a Haitian woman that could make things happen. She said that after years of trying to get pregnant, she’d gone to her and two months later found out that she was going to have a baby. Marcy called her friend as soon as she got home and got the woman’s number.

Her hand shook as she dialed, until Marcy called upon her anger to justify the step she was taking. The woman spoke in a lilting dialect, somehow at odds with the power that Marcy envisioned her having. They agreed to meet the next evening, with a price set and instructions to bring something personal of her husband’s, along with a lock of hair.

Marcy went to the woman’s house straight from work the next evening.

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

“I’ve been asking myself that all day. Yes, I’m sure.” Every time she’d had second thoughts about it, the vision of her husband with his arms wrapped around that hussy floated to the top.

The woman made a little doll, attaching the hair and comb that Marcy brought with string. She passed it through the incense smoke and chanted words that Marcy didn’t understand. After several minutes, she turned to her.

“It is done. Your husband is marked for death.”

The words sent a chill up Marcy’s spine. She hadn’t really known how she’d feel at this point.

“Do you know when or how?”

“No,” the woman said. “That is for them to decide.”

Marcy decided that she really didn’t want to know who ‘them’ were. She rushed home, afraid that she was going to throw up at any second. Her stomach settled a little as she prepared dinner, the mundane task of chopping vegetables a balm to her nerves.

The next morning her husband brought her breakfast in bed, along with a wrapped box.

“I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to give you this. I’m too excited about it. Go on, open it.”

Marcy unwrapped the box, staring at the tickets inside.

“I’ve been saving for months and driving the travel agent batty with my frequent stops by her office, but I wanted to plan the perfect vacation for us.”

Marcy looked at the travel agent’s business card. It was the leggy blonde. Tears dripped down her cheeks when she realized how wrong she’d been. He misread her crying.

“If you don’t want to go to Europe, we can pick somewhere else.”

“No. It’s wonderful. I-I don’t know what to say.”

“Just say you love me.” He smiled and walked away. “You enjoy your breakfast. I’ve got some chores to do out in the yard.”

“I love you,” she whispered. Then she heard the chainsaw start up.

Author Bio:

Laura Eno (http://lauraeno.blogspot.com) has written two YA fantasy novels and a paranormal romance. Her flash fiction has appeared in Twisted Dreams, The Monsters Next Door, Flashes in the Dark, 10Flash, House of Horror, The New Flesh, Everyday Weirdness and MicroHorror.

The Star Of Bethnal Green at A Twist Of Noir

2009-12-08T01:16:00.000-08:00

I have a Christmas story - THE STAR OF BETHNAL GREEN - over at A TWIST OF NOIR

http://a-twist-of-noir.blogspot.com/2009/12/twist-of-noir-294-paul-brazill.html

M at A Twist Of Noir

2009-12-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

My story M - which is in the Less Than Three Anthology- is now over at A TWIST OF NOIR in a slightly changed form.

here it is: http://a-twist-of-noir.blogspot.com/2009/12/twist-of-noir-293-paul-d-brazill.html

Guest Blogger: Matt Hilton - Genesis to Generation -or how characters are born

2009-12-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

Genesis to Generation – or how characters are born by Matt Hilton

Recently I posted about a graphic novel ‘The Bronx Kill’ coming out from DC Vertigo Crime next January, and in the post I raised the fact that while growing up I was an avid comic book reader. It’s no real surprise; most kids of my generation were. But the subject got me thinking, and I realised that my novels these days are as influenced by my early comic book heroes as they are by the contemporary crime and thriller characters that I’ve grown to love.

This realisation made me dig deep and look into the generation of my latest character, Joe Hunter – Dead Men’s Dust and Judgement and Wrath – an ex Special Forces soldier now making his way in the world as a vigilante cum gun for hire. Reviewers have often compared Hunter with Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, automatically assuming that Reacher must be my greatest influence because both guys are tough ex-soldiers kicking the arses of bad guys. Well, it’s not so. I’m a big fan of Lee’s, and admire Reacher, but the big guy had no part in the formulation of Joe Hunter. Hard to believe? Well, it’s true. Some reviewers have pointed out that I thanked Lee in the acknowledgements page of Dead Men’s Dust. I did. But that was because Lee was kind enough to congratulate me and offer his support, and kindly agreed to read my book. He’s that kind of person; a true gentleman, and eager to help new authors establish themselves. I owe Lee my thanks ten-fold for that. But I didn’t base Hunter on Reacher.

Here’s how Hunter came about:

One of my favourite comic books growing up was 2000 AD, and the iconic character from the comic was Judge Dredd – a tough as nails, no-nonsense lawman in a dystopian future. Now, at the same time as I was reading 2000 AD I was also consuming volume after volume of the 1930’s pulp fiction of Robert E. Howard and H P Lovecraft. I probably started writing in earnest to emulate Howard and Lovecraft’s styles and rattled off many pastiches based upon Howard’s Conan and the Lovecraftian Cthulu mythos. While doing so, I also wrote a coming-of-age teenage novel, but to be honest I really wanted to write fantasy and horror. I wrote a couple of fantasy novels, the most notable of which was called Shadowstalker. It was a gothic horror, an action thriller, and it featured a tough as nails, no nonsense lawman in a violent and dystopian fantasy world. See the connection? I think that the character of Andra Kendrick was my way of paying homage to Judge Dredd, albeit Kendrick made his way through his world with a sharp sword as his law giver.

Along the way, I was also reading Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan, George G Gillman’s Edge and Adam Steele, the so called men’s action books of the 1970’s and early 1980’s. All of these tough dudes resonated with me in a big way. They still do. I loved their no-nonsense approach to doling out retribution.

Wanting to write similar stories, I gave up on trying to write fantasy/horror and went on to write crime and thriller stand alones – sadly, none of which I could interest an agent or publisher in either. So it was back to the old drawing board, or more correctly the old computer. I looked around at what was selling, what was on the book shelves, and looked at the contemporary authors around today. I loved the humour and the visceral action of Robert Crais and Harlan Coben, and the dark moody supernatural undertones of John Connolly. These were the authors I wanted to emulate. Something I realised immediately was that they all wrote about on-going series characters, something I hadn’t done up until then.

I’d just completed a crime thriller called Covenant of Dead Names which remains unpublished at this time. But I loved the characters of Phil Ellis and Dave Oxford, two tough guy private eyes, and thought to make their adventures into an on-going series. On the back of this I started writing Dead Men’s Dust (under the title of Jubal’s Hollow) with Ellis and Oxford as the leads. But, they just weren’t working for me. So it was back to the old drawing board again. At this time I looked back to my earlier creation of Andra Kendrick (who was loosely influenced by Joe Dredd, Conan and the weird goings on in Lovecraftian territory) and I thought; ‘maybe I can up-date Kendrick to a contemporary setting’. The only thing was, I didn’t want to write about a cop or a P.I. but I wanted a character with the skills and world experience to place him in very dangerous situations. Hence, I decided my lead would be an ex Special Forces soldier, now retired and adrift in the world. Influenced I guess by Mack Bolan, I made him a vigilante waging his own private war against the evil people of the world.

So I guess you’d say that Joe Hunter was born from Phil Ellis and Mack Bolan via Andra Kendrick and Conan the Cimmerian, all the way back to Judge Dredd. Dave Oxford became Jared ‘Rink’ Rington, Hunter’s best friend and brother-in-arms, and I moved their adventures from the UK to the much larger and culturally diverse USA, still a fantasy world of many readers this side of the pond.

When/if you look closely, you might recognise these influences in my writing. Even Howard’s and Lovecraft’s influence stays with me to this day – the bad guys from my first two books, Tubal Cain and Dantalion, are both characters you’d perhaps define as sons of ‘Weird Tales’. And watch out for a nod towards Mack Bolan in book three.

So there you have it, a potted history of the genesis and generation of my character, Joe Hunter.

If you’re reading this, I’d like to think that you’ll look back on your own past and think on how your own characters were born, and what their lineage is. You might be surprised at what you find.

BIO:

Matt Hilton is the author of the Joe Hunter Thriller series, including Dead Men’s Dust and Judgement and Wrath. The third book in the series, Slash and Burn, will be released 1^st April 2010 in the UK.

Matt Blogs at Matt Hilton Thrills at: http://matthiltonbooks.blogspot.com/

and with Col Bury, he posts short crime, horror and thriller fiction at Thrillers, Killer ‘N’ Chillers at: http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com/

and has his website is at: http://www.matthiltonbooks.com

Guest Blogger: Paul D. Brazill

2009-12-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, me. Well, I thought I'd stick my nose into this Blogging Orgy to say thanks to ALL the guest Bloggers so far:

There are links to their guest blogs on the right. It's a been a cracking success with some great writing, exclusives and scoop!So thanks to all the writers, readers and EVERYONE who commented. (Especially Joyce who, clearly, doesn't sleep!)

There are more guest blogs to come from Matt Hilton, Jason Michel, Laura Eno and MORE!

Also. Today is the one year anniversary of the first story I wrote being published at Six Sentences. Black& White & Red All Over is:

http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/2008/12/black-white-red-all-over.html

Thanks to Robert McEvily and big thanks to Cormac Brown for his constant support and original PUSH to take the plunge. And thanks to all the people I've met on the internet - especially Keith Rawson and Nick Quantrill who introduced me to this cyber pulp world at My Space.

Coming soon : my regular -sore- spot

"I didn't say that, did I?"

at Jason Michel's Pulp Metal Magazine

http://pulpmetalmagazine.webs.com/

#fridayflash-Guest Blogger: Anne Billson - The Morning In Question

2009-12-04T00:10:00.000-08:00

THE MORNING IN QUESTION by Anne Billson

You know when you're away from home, and you wake up and lie there, trying to work out where you are and how you got there? When I woke up on the morning in question it was just like that, except the moment went on and on. It wasn't amnesia, because I knew who I was. I just couldn't work out where I was, or how I'd got there; there was a blank space where those memories should have been. I felt a bit groggy, but that was nothing unusual. I always felt groggy when I woke up. I need three cups of good strong coffee before I can even look at someone else without wanting to rip their head off.

But there was no coffee. Just the odour of stale cigarettes. I disentangled myself from the clammy bedclothes and struggled into a sitting position. I was wearing an oversized T-shirt printed with some sort of slogan I couldn't even begin to read upside-down. The room was the colour of Lucozade; I hauled myself out of bed and tugged at the orange curtains. They were made of some sort of man-made fibre that sent my fingertips into shock, and the runners kept jamming as I tried to draw them back. The window was stuck, or locked; either way, I couldn't make it open. Then again, there wasn't much incentive to open it; the view was of a multi-storey carpark. I couldn't see the sky.

As far as I could make out, it wasn't dark, but neither was it light, exactly; it was like that dullness you get just before a rainstorm. But at least with the curtains open I could see the room. Not that I really wanted to, I realised, now I was looking at it. The predominant theme was orange and beige: orange curtains, orange bedspread, orange painting of what looked like an exploding tangerine, beige carpet, beige wallpaper peeling off around the seams. The furniture was not so much G Plan as Z Plan.There was a faded brochure on the bedside table. WELCOME TO THE HOTEL VALLOMBROSA. I flicked through it. Laughing, happy couples. Tartan carpets. Rooms flooded with light. Rooms that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one I was in.

I wondered whether this could be some sort of reality TV show in which unwitting victims were plunged into bizarre situations so their hilarious reactions could be caught by hidden cameras, but concluded it was unlikely; I couldn't see much entertainment value in my stumbling around like a sleepwalker, or sitting on the edge of the bed, wondering what to do next. Or perhaps I'd been kidnapped? Apparently not, because the door wasn't locked; it opened on to a beige corridor. There was nothing to prevent me from leaving the room. But first I would need to get dressed.

I took off the T-shirt, which finally allowed me to read the slogan on the front: MY BOYFRIEND WENT TO BANGKOK AND FUCKED UNDERAGE PROSTITUTES AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT. I returned to the kidnap theory; someone must have dressed me while I was asleep. No way would I wear a T-shirt like that, not unless someone was threatening to shoot a puppy. At least the room had an en suite, if you could call it that. More of a cubby-hole, really. The toilet wouldn't flush properly, and there was no paper. The shower made noises like a sheep being strangled; I rinsed myself under a dribble of water that alternated between freezing cold or scalding hot. The bathtowel was streaked with yellow stains, so I patted myself dry with a tiny handtowel. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something scuttling across the cracked tiles of the shower stall, but steadfastly refused to turn my head.

Some things it was better not to know.

It did cross my mind that this was probably some sort of hell.

Later on, I put it to Hilary. "This is hell, right? And I'm being punished for something I did. Or something I didn't do. I'm not a believer. I mean, I wasn't a believer."

Hilary frowned. "May I refer you to Step Four of our Twelve Step Plan? There is no such thing as heaven or hell."

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven," I said.

She peered at me suspiciously. "That's just the sort of thinking that gets you into trouble."

I said, "Whatever." It was the first time I'd ever uttered the word in such a context, but the occasion seemed to warrant it.

Whatever. I was trapped in the world's worst hotel, with what I was now realising was the world's worst luggage. Who the hell had packed this stuff? Not me, that was for sure. The nylon suitcase contained a scratchy tartan dressing-gown, a frilly white suspender belt but no stockings, a push-up bra that obviously wasn't going to fit, a white crochet bikini that obviously wasn't going to fit either, a turquoise smock-top that would make me look eight months pregnant, a skimpy lime-green vest, five non-matching grey socks, some pink plastic flip-flops and a pair of brown shorts which looked about five sizes too big. No jacket, no shoes, no jeans, no T-shirts which didn't have obscene slogans printed on them. Obviously, I'd ended up with someone else's suitcase. Someone pear-shaped, and with no taste.

I put on the lime-green vest and cinched the shorts around my waist with the cord from the dressing-gown. Under the circumstances, it was the best I could do. Why would anyone pack clothes like these when they weren't on holiday? And to judge by the view from the window this was no holiday zone. This was Swindon, or Slough, or Croydon.

Or worse.

Bio: ANNE BILLSON is a novelist, film critic and photographer who has lived in London, Tokyo and Croydon, and now lives in Paris. Her books include SUCKERS (an upwardly mobile vampire novel), STIFF LIPS (a Notting Hill ghost story) and THE EX (a supernatural detective story), as well as several works of non-fiction, including SPOILERS, a selection from her 25 years of film criticism. She reviews films for the TV pages of the Sunday Telegraph and writes a film column for the Guardian.

See Anne Billson's articles, stories & photographs at http://multiglom.blogspot.com/
Browse and buy Anne Billson’s books at http://stores.lulu.com/billson

Pulp Metal Magazine - looking for submissions.

2009-12-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

Very soon I will be writing a regular column - -for the new ezine: PULP METAL. Pulp Metal is the brainchild of Our Man In France - Jason Michel AKA The Beaten Dog.

It will be called I DIDN'T SAY THAT, DID I?

They are on the look out for contributors, especially in the art/ comix sections but also in fiction/ non fiction etc.

Take a preview peek here:

http://pulpmetalmagazine.webs.com/

If anything blows your skirt up get in touch.

Guest Blogger: Cormac Brown - The Ballad Of Paulie Decibels

2009-12-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

"The Ballad of Paulie Decibels" by Cormac Brown

(rap-style)

Into the dark mind he delves
You may go up to eleven, Nigel
But Paulie Decibels goes up to twelve

The Gods of Noir give their benediction
To the verses, the curses and the new blood
Of Paul’s crime fiction

Decibels with the maddest of the mad flow
He’s a wild mix of Ted Lewis,
Chandler, Bukowski, and Poe

He makes the inmates applaud in their cells
He makes the Jezebels swoon
The critics can’t quell
The volume of Paulie Decibels’ tune

Bio:

Cormac Brown is my pen name. I'm an up-and-slumming writer in the city of Saint Francis and I'm following in the footsteps of Hammett...minus the TB and working for the Pinkerton Agency. A couple of stories that I've stiched and stapled together, can be found here: http://cormacwrites.blogspot.com/

Cormac Brown wrote "Le Chat Noir" for the Seventh Issue Astonishing Adventures Magazine http://www.facebook.com/l/53518;issuu.com/astonishing/docs/aam7

As well as "All The Better To" for the Sixth Issue of AAM
http://www.facebook.com/l/53518;issuu.com/astonishing/docs/astonishing_adventures_magazine_6

His story "They Come From Above" appeared in "Beat To A Pulp,"http://beattoapulp.com/stor/2009/1122_cb_TheyComeFromAbove.cfm

Guest Blogger: Colin Graham - Reflections On A Decade In The Wild East

2009-12-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

Reflections on a Decade in the Wild East

by Colin Graham

Hedonistic triumphs, drunk tank nightmares and a barren existence of seemingly perpetual solitude, have in the main been the highlights and low points of my more than ten years of living in the former Communist Europe.

Throw in a whirlwind turnover of jobs that make me look less like the stayer I in many ways am, I look back on my experience in first St. Petersburg, then Warsaw and most recently Belgrade with a good deal of astonishment that I have already surpassed a decade in this part of the world.

Three years in Russia, six in Poland and a year and a half in Serbia have been achieved - if that’s the right word - via a combination of luck, commitment and sheer bloody-mindedness, which has edged very keenly towards the self-destructive.

Circumstance brought me to Russia in 1998 after the college I was working for as a lecturer in English and Philosophy discovered it was in dire straits and had to make staff cut backs. I seized the opportunity with both hands and applied for voluntary redundancy and wanted to dance for joy when I found I was one of a handful who got it.

The severance pay meant that I had cash to spare at a time in St. Petersburg when Russia as a whole was apparently being flushed down the toilet. August 1998 saw Boris Yeltsin default on the country’s debts and devalue the ruble. Watching from the UK while my visa was being sorted wasn’t a happy experience: the old aged pensioners ranting at TV cameras with empty shopping bags, the long queues of the desperate trying to change their increasingly worthless roubles into dollars and the cloud of despair the western media eagerly sought to form over the Russian nation had me worried, to say the least.

My then wife – from Poland – was doing a degree in Russian at Birmingham University so she was due to go to St Petersburg on her gap year. When I got my job, teaching English as a Foreign Language at a school in the city, it meant we could spend that time together.

The irony was that it was Russia which probably – in the end - split us up.

St. Petersburg before my arrival and the onset of the crisis had been a mad place anyway by all accounts. It had just been more expensive in dollar terms (the Euro didn’t exist then). The freefall of the rouble meant that so many lives were supposedly about to fall apart but a night out in the former capital would soon disabuse you of that notion.

I had already experienced that fresh, unbridled hedonism when I visited Poland with my wife when she made her annual trip back home over the years. Most of the clubs of the time have long since closed down. There was one, called Blue Velvet – a converted public toilet in Saski Park, where later thousands would kneel to pay homage to the late Pope John Paul II – whose laid back values were those of the Russian clubs I visited later on.

Ecstasy, speed and LSD were all on the menu in that venue, as was the chill out room concept, perhaps one of the 1990s’ most splendid inventions. I would lie down in one – arguably the best of the lot – in St. Petersburg’s Griboyedov club, when I needed a break from the intense partying, and find a helpful cushion being pushed beneath my head to sleep more easily. When it comes to hospitality, the Slavs really do point the way.

But they can get surly too. Not least to foreigners from the west. Being stopped by the St. Petersburg militsia and having your money taken from you was a constant bane of mine and my Brit friends’ existence. The police would approach asking for your passport to check your identity, then pilfer the contents of your wallet. Complaints from embassies and others were ignored completely.

Being locked up in the infamous ‘Kolska’ drunk tank in Warsaw wasn’t much fun either. Forcibly stripped, having a ‘blood test’ needle shoved in your arm and then being wrestled into a cell with bruised and bloodied fellow inmates was the most profound culture shock I could have ever imagined. No one had told me of the place’s existence in the first instance. And as far as my wife was concerned, I had simply disappeared.

I went missing in Serbia for completely different reasons. The Russians of 1998 loved me and other westerners for being in their country; the Poles were less concerned in 2001 –when I arrived as a resident – because they had loads of foreigners in their midst already. The Serbs, even in 2009, think you are mad to be in their country.

And yet they treat you with the utmost friendliness when you sit down with them. They’ll also insist on paying for everything. Then they will disappear as if you never existed. Never a phone call, nothing. Their Orthodox brothers and sisters in Russia are completely the opposite. There, friendship is an art.

This could be covert revenge for NATO’s bombardment of the then Yugoslavia in 2000. Maybe. But that wasn’t my doing, nor was it millions of Brits or Americans’. A lot of us didn’t agree with it in the first place.

But in Russia I was smacked in the face for being in someone’s way and in Poland there were plenty of hooligan and me opportunities, let’s just say. But in Serbia, everyone keeps their distance.

In this, the hub of the former Yugoslavia, where there are apparently a number of war criminals knocking around, you find that you are in one of Europe’s safest cities.

And yet, given time, you are plunged into the least safe of circumstances, because the Serbs often abandon you. You can get beaten up quite easily in Russia and yet your Russian friends will rush to your aid without a second thought. That is a paradox you have to get used to and given the Belgrade experience, it is a pleasant alternative on the whole. Because you are very unlikely to get punched in Serbia, despite the fact that NATO strafed various parts of it to bits. But you are also likely to be left completely to your own devices, with not so much as a call from an acquaintance to ask after your health. That can be very hard to swallow. However, as with so many other things in life, eventually – no matter how glacial the progress - you do find that your fortunes begin to change for the better.

Poland might seem to lie culturally opposed to the two Orthodox countries but in fact it shares a good deal in common with each in contrasting ways. Whilst they are certainly as hospitable as the Russians in a more straightforward manner than the Serbs, the Poles are also as pious as their southern European counterparts in some striking ways.

While in Warsaw at the time of Pope John Paul II’s funeral, I was struck by the number of teenagers who genuflected in the dirt to pay their respects. This was a deeply conservative Pope who was implacably opposed to the sexual revolution that swept the country and the rest of Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism. But yet there they were, the hormonally-challenged on their knees in worship.

And in Belgrade, the huge St. Sava Cathedral is home to relays of youngsters lighting candles to icons, while on their way to or from work or college. The girls often wear the tightest of jeans or the shortest of skirts yet they ooze piety at precisely the same time.

Yet when young Russian women dress up they do so for the least holy of reasons.

A typical night in a St Petersburg club involved a compere encouraging young men and women to get up on stage and take their clothes off to the booming sounds coming from the DJ. They obliged with abandon. It was often very amusing but also a turn on, because in the epi-centre of the former Soviet Bloc, this is where freedom reigned.

In my experience, the new-found liberty has had the Russians topping the bill, ironically, as the most unfettered. Yet, it was the Poles who started the whole process with Solidarnosc and the Serbs, as part of the then Yugoslavia – were not even members of the old Communist bloc, giving them some liberal leverage in the whole mad process of change.

It has been a world turned upside down and I have been part of an imperfect yet exhilarating chapter on a dizzyingly insane roller coaster.

Bio:

Colin Graham is a Birmingham-born freelance journalist currently based in Belgrade, Serbia. Struggling along with hack work and too many rejections he invariably finds himself uplifted by an unforeseen boost when all seems lost.

Light relief comes from sessions on the bar stool at the Three Carrots Irish pub and seeing the Villa win.

Colin knows Paul as a fellow bar fly along the seedy strip of Warsaw’s Al. Jana Pawla II (John Paul II Avenue) in the mid-noughties. He currently has a story online here: http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com/2009/11/ahead-of-game-by-colin-graham.html

Sly Stoned at Blink Ink

2009-12-01T00:25:00.000-08:00

I've another 50 word story - Sly Stoned- at Blink Ink

It's here: http://blink-ink.com/content/archives/sly-stoned/

Guest Blogger: Jodi MacArthur - Classy Like Frank

2009-11-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

Classy Like Frank

By Jodi MacArthur

I sat on the edge of the bed whirling the knife in my hands. I was bored. What she had to say might have been interesting…but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She’d be dead soon.

“Sometimes I wanted to scream because I felt so awful. I didn’t want to see my past, the people in my past that is. I felt afraid of the future. The present felt hopeless. My religion hurt. I didn’t know what I believed anymore. My heart hurt. I felt so lonely. I didn’t know how to fix any of it.” Janelle rubbed her temples and sat back against the headboard.

She wore a tight black summer dress with a veiled hat. Kind of classy, like the older times when that guy, Frank something, used to croon to pretty girls. What didn’t fit were the dainty silk gloves with the red cross-stitch roses. Something didn’t strike me right – perhaps it just didn’t match. “Not that I don’t appreciate the job and money you offered me,” I said. “But I hardly think those are reasons a woman should hire someone to off herself.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but I can’t see anyway out of it. If you don’t mind me asking…is this your first?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I hope to make it easy on you. And thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“No problem. It’d help if I didn’t know so much about you.” I meant it too. Janelle was a real sweetheart. Course, rich folk knew how to put on a show when they were trying to get something they wanted. She was already getting what she wanted from me. That cost her a couple thou. I suppose that makes her genuine, but rich people – you never know with those sorts.

“I’ve stashed the money in a place you would never find. The only way you are getting it is at the end of my story.” Janelle folded her gloved fingers in her lap. Her blue eyes were gorgeous – sincere.

“Yeah, yeah, so why don’t you keep telling me then.” My eyes were drawn to the silky gloves again. Rich people, you know, you can never know why they do the things they do, or wear the things they wear. Besides when it’s your last day, last hour, last breath, you want to choose your favorite items whether they matched or not. Maybe the gloves held good memories for her? I just wish she’d shut up so I could get on with my life. Blah, blah, blah…I’m so rich and sooo depressed. I should just stab her already.

“You will be happy to know there isn’t much more to tell. I wrote a best seller, made millions. Happiness should be there, but it isn’t. I am miserable.”

“I thought insane people were supposed to be happy.”

Janelle gave me a look.

“Not that you are insane…or anything.”

“The problem is,” she swung her legs over the bed and sat up, “I just really don’t want to live anymore.”

“No millionaire I know just ups and decides there’s no reason to live.” Not that I didn’t mind inheriting a few thousand of it. Perhaps I could retire in Mexico and sip out of coconuts or something. Did they have coconuts in Mexico? They had senoritas. I knew that.

“Okay, fine, I’ll tell you.”

“Yeah, tell me.” I twirled the sharp knife she had given me between both hands.

“I’m being followed. I’ve been followed for years.”

I stopped twirling the knife and looked at Janelle. “By who?”

“My step father, the sick fu-, person.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I’m not the swearing sort,” she explained.

“Ah,” I said back.

“I’m going to pour myself a last drink of wine. Would you like a drink, mister…”

“George.”

She uncorked a merlot; probably some fancy shmancy stuff from France or wherever rich people import their wine.

Why not? “Sure.”

She poured two drinks and brought one to me.

“So he messed with me when I was little. Cheated on my mom with a handful of the neighbor ladies – even her best friend. My mom found out, confronted him about it. He convinced her that she was the crazy one. He told her that I’d made up lies about him, that the neighbor ladies were just jealous. She believed. They divorced a year later anyway. It was his idea. I swore that one day…one day.” She drew her finger across her throat like a knife.

Ironic. That’s what I’d be doing to her soon. “So call the cops.”

“I did… but there’s no proof. They can’t do anything if there is no evidence.”

“So hire a security guard.”

“That’s why I hired you.” She smiled for the first time.

I didn’t like the way she said that or the way her gloved hand was sliding underneath the pillow. “I thought you hired me to kill you.”

“I hired you to kill him, but unfortunately he shot you, after you stabbed him with my kitchen knife.”

What? I looked down at the kitchen knife in my hand and stood.

Janelle set down her glass on the nightstand, and slipped a pistol from beneath the pillow. “The body is in the closet – over there.”

I looked over at the closet door. It was slightly ajar. There was a trickle of crimson on the white carpet. What was this chick trying to pull? I wanted my money. “Look, lady. I came here to do a job.”

She stood and squeezed the trigger. I felt the bullet hit my stomach. I dropped my wine glass. It landed with a soft plop on the carpet. I watched her silk gloves holding that killing machine. Rich people, you never can tell when they are putting on a show.

Janelle drew back the hammer. “I’m sorry, George. Really, I am. Thanks for listening. And,” she nodded towards the closet, “for him.”

Bang.

Bio:

Jodi MacArthur: Exiled in deep southern Texas, Jodi is a Seattle author hoping to write her way back to the Pacific Northwest. In her spare time, she twitters at her beloved finches, Hitchcock and Emily, and drinks coffee - but never at the same time.

Find her blog and links to her writing here:
www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com

Guest Blogger: Nicholas Towasser - Listen To The Silence

2009-11-29T10:40:00.000-08:00

“Listen to the Silence” by Nicholas Towasser

Evil is … a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstruous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world.

Marquis de Sade, L’Histoire de Juliette, ou les Prospérités du Vice

You go to school. You study. You don’t do nothing. You apply yourself. You shirk. You dream. You don’t care. You make your parents proud. You disgrace your mother and father.

You go away to college. You live at home and take classes. You stay at home and work. You stay at home and live off your parents.

You have a career. You have a prison sentence. You’re a rocket reaching for the sky. You’re a hog wallowing in muck.

You meet new people. You see the same old crowd. You expose yourself to the unknown and exotic. You’re closed off and time stands still. You’re growing. You’re stagnating.

You’re afire with lust and drive. You’re already an old man. The possibilities are limitless. It’s a dead-end. You’re soaring. Six feet under would be an improvement. You’re your own god. You’re your own worst enemy.

You’ve no time for sleep. Sleep is a luxury. There’s so much to experience! It’s the same old shit.

You earn. You spend. You save. You fritter. Money is a tool, and you make it work for you. Money is your master, and you slave for it.

You fall in love. You stay lonely. You fuck anything that moves. At the rate you’re going, you’ll still be a virgin when the hearse pulls up.

No matter how you live, you sense something occasionally. A phenomenon too terrible for words.

When you’re in bed alone, you hear it. The howling, deafening silence. The void. Eternal and limitless. Like an ocean, but deeper and stretching farther than you’ll ever imagine. It defies language, art, and science.

The more you listen to it, the more you know that everything you’ve done and will do is a distraction from the terrible, unspeakable truth. Your triumphs, failures, loves, hatreds, causes, and curses are frivolities. Whether you climb the mountains or rot in the gutters, it matters not a whit.

You tell yourself that you’ll be remembered, that historians will write of you long after you’re dead. If not entire books, then chapters. If not chapters, pages. If not pages, paragraphs. If not paragraphs, a footnote. Perhaps, perhaps. Whole libraries might be dedicated to your heritage. But what of it? Long after the pages turn to dust and the words are forgotten, the silence, that mammoth, unforgiving, cruel silence, will bellow ceaselessly, without end and without beginning.

When you’re heatedly arguing about a controversy or a private matter, when your voice grows thunderous, take a minute to think. What are you really shouting about? A trifle you’ll forget before the sun sets? Can it be your screaming is an inarticulate keen? Wordless sobbing at the vast injustice, life’s cul-de-sac, the brick wall. Your words, like your routines, schemes, hopes, are filler. Without them, without the window dressing, you’d see existence for what it is: a moonscape.

So what you do? Well, that’s the joke. That’s the hysterical joke, although it’s not very funny for you, me, or anyone else. Should you work? To what end? Enjoy yourself? Try savoring—truly savoring—life’s stupid animal pleasures with that constant din. Earplugs won’t help. Suicide seems a viable option, but who’s to say shedding the mortal coil will quiet the silence? That’s an untested theory.

What kind of a god would do this to us? What kind of a god would make it a sin to resent him for it?

###

BIO: Nicholas Towasser is editor of Dissident Books,http://www.dissidentbooks.com/index.php publisher of Notes on Democracy: A New Edition by H. L. Mencken and Don’t Call Me a Crook! A Scotsman’s Tale of World Travel, Whisky, and Crime by Bob Moore. A native New Yorker, Nicholas lives in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In a previous life he was a reporter, and wrote on music, retail, banking, and petrochemicals. After years of listening to rock ‘n’ roll, he now lives for classical music.

Guest Blogger: Joseph Grant - Is The Great American Novel Dead ...or Just Undead?

2009-11-28T07:50:00.000-08:00

Is the Next Great American Novel Dead...or Just Undead?

Joseph Grant

Of late there is a penchant in the book business for literary cannibalism. Not that writers these days are stealing phrases or pages from unsuspecting writers living or dead, but outright plagiarism, unlike the oh-so-mortal writer, is alive and well and will likely never die. It would be bad enough if that was the only problem, but it is much worse than that. What is occurring as a trend in today's literary marketplace is the wholesale theft of entire novels in the guise of a trendy literary 'mash-up' of genres, for the lack of better words.

A mash-up by definition is when an artist combines two ideas and blends them together to create a hopefully seamless entity, hence a mash-up. Back in the day, it was called 'sampling'. Back in the day before that, it was called stealing and or plagiarism but even then it was usually confined to a small part of the whole.

The current movement in literature is to take an existing classic and interject, say, a zombie or vampire or any such monster will do, really and market it as a semi-original work of fiction. This is tantamount to literary grave-robbing, let alone sacrilege to treat a masterpiece with such glib rancor. Insult is then added to the author's already injured memory by the no-talent hack of a writer tacking their name onto the author as if the author, many years dead had risen from the grave like one of the atrocious added-on characters the new author has created from his small black and white TV mind and somehow co-authored what amounts to literary desecration. It's as if the publishing world has lost its identity and now allows literary graffiti to be tagged along the walls of immortals. One wonders if the modern-day author has suddenly stopped thinking and writing the Great American Novel and looked into the literary mirror and saw plagiarism and coattail-riding as something in which to aspire.

Is this a generation's "payback" for having to suffer through the works of esteemed authors like Austen, Melville, Shakespeare & Hawthorne in school? If this is a generation's thumbing their nose at tradition and having a laugh, I'm not getting the humor, I'm afraid. It is a glaring omission and admission of a literary business in trouble and in the process of imploding. The true question is: 'Why are we eating our own?' The answer is of course an unequivocal one. It is literary lethargy. Instead of trying to write well, we take the literary lazy road out and we write upon the literary bathroom wall in the form of parody.

This is not to say that there aren't great writers working today in cafes and in homes all across the country to write the Great American Novel. Search your bookshelves and you may see some of them yourself. But where are the writers of tomorrow? It's tragic to think that they are writing monster parodies of classics. Doesn't that strike you as empty and pathetic? It does me.

The problem lies with the literary agents who reject struggling writers, but yet sign this literary pabulum into print. Yet, we writers are at the mercy of such inept beings. Instead of finding the next aforementioned Austen, King, Hemingway, Rowling or Cornwell, they're too busy signing the next great unimaginative plagiarist. It's no wonder that a real writer can't catch an honest break, so to speak.

It's tragic that great writing is being prevented from publication because publishing itself became too big an insolent child and merged with corporations that hired agents and publishers to baby sit the industry; people who had more interest in the bottom line than the written one. As little as twenty-five years ago, it was still possible to get an unsolicited manuscript into a large house and receive an acceptance without using a middleman. Before publishing became a business, it had been run by intellectuals, whereas, it's now run by businessmen.

This is not to say that agents all agents are out for blood or have no true insight. There are still agents out there who read for the pleasure of reading, just as there are writers who still write for the pleasure of writing. Only when agents stop signing celebutards, fallen politicians and half-assed hacks instead of real writers will literature be able to look at itself in the mirror again and not see a monster looking back.

BIO: My short stories have been published in 147 literary reviews and e-zines, such as Byline, New Authors Journal, Underground Voices, Nite-Writer's International Literary Arts Journal, Howling Moon Press, Hack Writers, New Online Review, Literary Tonic, Six Sentences, NexGenPulp, Is This Reality Zine , Darkest Before Dawn, strangeroad.com, FarAway Journal, Full of Crow, Heroin Love Songs, Bewildering Stories, Absent Willow Literary Review and the Absent Willow Anthology and Harbinger* 33 a story in the anthology of horror, Northern Haunts, as well as three UK literary reviews, Bottom of the World #1 & 2 and Cupboard Gloom and Write This. I have won “Story of the Month” at Bartleby-Snopes Literary Review. I have written for The New York Bar Guide (as a reviewer) and in various newspaper articles that have appeared in The Pasadena Star, Whittier News and the San Gabriel Tribune. I have published a work of verse, Indigo, with Alpha Beat Press and have completed my first novel. I currently reside in Los Angeles . NOTE: Six stories of mine have been recently featured in 6S Volume 1&2, a collection of short stories by various writers available at Amazon. I also write a monthly newsletter column for Literary Mary.