A while back, after I’d downloaded Stanza for my iPhone, I came across a free sampler of ebooks from Random House. While these mostly consisted of science fiction and fantasy books, it also contained three of Charlie Huston’s novels – Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, and A Dangerous Man. I knew Huston had written Moon Knight for a while, and I knew his name, so I downloaded them to check out later.

So, one day, while I was waiting for the subway, and in need of a new book, I loaded up Caught Stealing and started to read. I have to say that at first I had my doubts. For much of the beginning, the story, as told by the 1st person narrator, seemed mired in mundane life tasks. It seemed to boil down to sentences like – “I bundled my laundry up. Dumped it into the basket. I took the basket down to the laundry room. I loaded the colors into the machine. Added detergent.” Etc. I don’t mind slow beginnings, setting the stage, but nothing was really happening, and I wanted it to. * But as the novel continued, and as I worked my way into successive novels, I realized that what Huston has done here is capture the motion of a snowball rolling down an arctic mountain. At first it moves slowly, but soon it gathers speed and mass until at the end it’s hurtling along toward a massive collision.

And that’s what these books do. Hank Thompson starts as a normal guy with a bit of a shadowed past. But when he finds a key, all hell starts breaking loose. As the books continue, the hole he finds himself in gets deeper and deeper. Huston’s writing is extremely engaging and it pulls you in. Hank is a strange animal, too – likable and yet not completely. Someone you root for and despise at the same time. Together with the heaps of abuse that Huston piles on him, I could barely tear myself away. I went through all three books in record time.

As to making me sick, he very nearly did. One afternoon I was in the Jay St. subway station waiting for a train and reading A Dangerous Man. A particular scene in the book involves scarring from plastic surgery ** mixed with a description of multiple drug doses. Somehow this all combined to make me literally nauseous, to the point where I thought I was going to throw up. I see that as the mark of a good writer if he can provoke such a strong physical response.

I highly recommend Huston’s work and I intend to read more of his work in the future.

* This may be partly because of where I read it. Waiting for a subway can make one impatient.

** Plastic surgery is one of the few things that makes me queasy. Blood doesn’t bother me, I can watch eye operations up close, but plastic surgery or even talking about plastic surgery – boob jobs, facelifts, whatever – make me nauseous.

September 9 already promises to be an exciting day, but it just keeps on getting better. Not only does Beatles Rock Band release that day, but the remastered Beatles albums do as well. Then there’s an Apple event happening which I will likely follow. And the release of the movie 9, which seems like a movie that was made for me. It’s like my birthday, only not.

You excited for any (or all) of these?

I was going to link to this interview with Jeffrey Ford at the Nebula site in any case because he’s one of my favorite writers as some of you might know. I’m always interested in hearing him or reading him talk about writing and about his process and his thoughts on the genre and fiction in general.

I was surprised, however, to see my own name pop up in the interview in response to a question about podcasts. I’ve mentioned the two stories I read for Podcastle here before (“The Dreaming Wind” and “The Annals of Eelin-Ok”) and it was my pleasure to do those readings being as big a fan as I am of Jeff’s work. Jeff told me in person the last time I saw him that he liked my readings which made me very happy – that’s what I would have hoped for. That he mentioned them in the interview just underscores that for me.

Needless to say, I won’t be holding my breath for the opportunity to read his collected works, but if another opportunity pops up any time soon, you can be sure I’ll jump on it.

This here is a test post by me from my iPhone using the WordPress app. I can has remote blogging?

I haven’t announced it here, but last week I got word that my story, “Pumpkinhead”, was accepted for the Shadows of the Emerald City anthology from Northern Frights Publishing. Since I first read about the call for stories, I knew I wanted to write something for it. I grew up reading the Baum Oz stories – I went to the public library one summer and started with the first book (The Wizard of Oz) and worked my way through the whole series. You can probably guess who one of my favorite characters was. Adding a touch of horror to the Oz mythos seemed a natural thing to do (so much so that it’s been done before, for example in Tad Williams’ Otherland series). But when I figured out who I would write about, I refreshed myself on the character and what was said about him in the books, and from there the story just grew, very much like some of the things in the story itself. It was one of those rare stories that just unfurled from within my mind and pretty much came out on the page in one fluid piece (though stretched out over days). I’m glad it will be seeing print and I’m looking forward to the finished anthology when it eventually comes out.

This, together with two other projects that I’m not ready to announce yet, would bring my total publications to 5. Which is nice seeing as last year this time I was just about to hear about my second ever acceptance. At Clarion West we set goals and I committed to six published stories by around this time. For a while it was looking like none. If all four that I’m expecting happen, that will be a decent percentage of my goal.

But regardless of the submissions or the acceptances, right now I’m having a lot of fun writing and finishing and revising and submitting. For the first time since Clarion West, I am having fun with the writing and I think it’s having an effect. I’m doing it because I am getting such a thrill out of it.

This post is more rambly than I’d intended, but I’m just feeling good about writing right now and I wanted to say something to balance all the times I’ve felt shitty about it.

A few things that are interesting to note – if I count the non-confirmed acceptances I’ve received, four out of the five were for themed publications (this includes the two Shimmer sales). I find myself wondering why that is – is it the theme that helps focus me? Is it the inspiration that creates a different kind of story? Or is it just that those stories have deadlines and so I write, revise and send them by a certain date? I think maybe a little bit of all of them (though especially the last).

Also to note – only one of the stories was workshopped. Which is not to say that I didn’t get feedback – and all of them were critiqued by at least one person in my current writing group – but I think the closeness of deadlines meant I couldn’t always put them through a group. Which doesn’t say to me that stories are better when not workshopped – again it comes down to focus. I’m still trying to figure out which are the best paths to take with revision and I think that the better I get at that, the better my workshopped stories will end up.

I plan to send out a few more stories in the coming weeks. So we’ll see if they bear any fruit. But in the meantime I’m having a blast doing it.